ENGLISH   1 


California 
WithSraWrr— 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

LIBRARY 

COLLEGE  OF  AGRICULTURE 
DAVIS 


•• 


THE  TORCH 

AND  OTHER  LECTURES  AND 
ADDRESSES 


BY 

GEORGE  EDWARD  WOODBERRY 


NEW  YORK 

HARCOURT,   BRACE  AND   HOWE 
1920 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


COPYRIGHT,    IQOS,    1910,    1916,    BY 
GEORGE    E.    WOODBERRY 

COPYRIGHT,    1920,    BY 
HARCOURT,  BRACE    AND    HOWE,  INC. 


ENGLISH  1 


CONTENTS 

THE  TORCH 

Man  and  the  Race,  3 

The  Language  of  all  the  World,  25 

The  Titan  Myth  (I),  43 

The  Titan  Myth  (H),  63 

Spenser,  83 

Milton,  103 

Wordsworth,  121 

Shelley,  143 

THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

Poetic  Madness,  165 
Marlowe,  183 
Camoens,  202 
Byron,  221 
Gray,  241 
Tasso,  261 
Lucretius,  281 
Inspiration,  301 

THE  POE  CENTENARY,  323 

SHAKESPEARE,   329 

THE  SALEM  ATHEN^UM,   351 


,!3- 


THE  TORCH 


Eight  lectures  on  Race  Power  in  Litera 
ture,  delivered  before  the  Lowell  Institute 
of  Boston,  1903 


AUGESCUNT  ALIAE  GENTES,   ALIAE   MINUUNTUR, 
INQUE  BREVI  SPATIO  MUTANTUR  SAECLA  ANIMANTUM 
ET  QUASI  CURSORES  VITAI  LAMPADA  TRADUNT 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 

IT  belongs  to  a  highly  developed  race  to  become,  in  a 
true  sense,  aristocratic  —  a  treasury  of  its  best  in  practi 
cal  and  spiritual  types,  and  then  to  disappear  in  the  sur 
rounding  tides  of  men.  So  Athens  dissolved  like  a  pearl 
in  the  cup  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  Rome  in  the  cup 
of  Europe,  and  Judaea  in  the  cup  of  the  Universal  Com 
munion.  Though  death  is  the  law  of  all  life,  man  touches 
this  earthen  fact  with  the  wand  of  the  spirit,  and  trans 
forms  it  into  the  law  of  sacrifice.  Man  has  won  no  vic 
tory  over  his  environment  so  sublime  as  this,  finding  in 
his  mortal  sentence  the  true  choice  of  the  soul  and  in  the 
road  out  of  Paradise  the  open  highway  of  eternal  life. 
Races  die;  but  the  ideal  of  sacrifice  as  the  highest  race- 
destiny  has  seldom  occurred  to  men,  though  it  has  been 
suggested  both  by  devout  Jews  and  by  devout  Irishmen 
as  the  divinely  appointed  organic  law  of  the  Hebrew 
and  the  Celt.  In  the  general  view  of  men  the  extinction 
of  a  race  partakes  of  the  unreasoning  finality  of 
nature. 

The  vital  flow  of  life  has  this  in  common  with  disease 
—  that  it  is  self -limited ;  the  fever  runs  its  course,  and 
burns  away.  "All  thoughts,  all  passions,  all  delights," 
have  this  history.  In  the  large  arcs  of  social  being,  move 
ments  of  the  human  spirit,  however  embracing  and  pro 
found,  obey  the  same  law  of  the  limitation  of  specific 
energy.  Revolutions,  reforms,  re-births  exhaust  their 

3 


4  THE   TORCH 

fuel,  and  go  out.  Races  are  only  greater  units  of  man; 
for  a  race,  as  for  an  individual,  there  is  a  time  to  die;  and 
that  time,  as  history  discloses  it,  is  the  moment  of  per 
fection.  This  is  the  largest  fact  in  the  moral  order  of  the 
world;  it  is  the  center  of  providence  in  history.  In  the 
life  of  the  human  spirit  the  death  of  the  best  of  its 
achieving  elements,  in  the  moment  of  their  consumma 
tion,  is  as  the  fading  of  the  flower  of  the  field  or  the 
annual  fall  of  the  leaves  of  the  forest  in  the  natural  world; 
and  unless  this  be  a  sacrificial  death,  it  were  wantonness 
and  waste  like  the  deaths  of  nature;  but  man  and  his 
works  are  supernatural,  and  raised  above  nature  by  an 
imperishable  relation  which  they  contain.  Race-history 
is  a  perpetual  celebration  of  the  Mass.  The  Cross  ini 
tials  every  page  with  its  broad  gold,  and  he  whose  eye 
misses  that  letter  has  lost  the  clue  to  the  meaning.  I 
do  not  refer  to  the  self-devotion  of  individuals,  the 
sacred  lives  of  the  race.  I  speak  of  the  involuntary 
element  in  the  life  of  nations,  or  what  seems  such  on 
the  vast  scale  of  social  life.  Always  some  great  culture 
is  dying  to  enrich  the  soil  of  new  harvests,  some  civi 
lization  is  crumbling  to  rubbish  to  be  the  hill  of  a  more 
beautiful  city,  some  race  is  spending  itself  that  a  lower 
and  barbarous  world  may  inherit  its  stored  treasure- 
house.  Although  no  race  may  consciously  devote  itself 
to  the  higher  ends  of  mankind,  it  is  the  prerogative  of 
its  men  of  genius  so  to  devote  it;  nor  is  any  nation  truly 
great  which  is  not  so  dedicated  by  its  warriors  and 
statesmen,  its  saints  and  heroes,  its  thinkers  and 
dreamers.  A  nation's  poets  are  its  true  owners;  and 
by  the  stroke  of  the  pen  they  convey  the  title-deeds  of 
its  real  possessions  to  strangers  and  aliens. 

This  dedication  of  the  energy  of  a  race  by  its  men 


MAN   AND   THE   RACE  5 

of  genius  to  the  higher  ends  of  mankind  is  the  sap  of 
all  the  world.  The  spiritual  life  of  mankind  spreads,  the 
spiritual  unity  of  mankind  grows,  by  this  age-long  sur 
render  of  privilege  and  power  into  the  hands  of  the 
world's  new  men,  and  the  leavening  of  the  mass  by  the 
best  that  has  anywhere  arisen  in  it,  which  is  thus  brought 
about.  The  absorption  of  aristocracies  in  democracies, 
the  dissolution  of  the  nobler  product  in  inferior  en 
vironments,  the  salutary  death  of  cultures,  civilizations, 
breeds  of  men,  is  the  strict  line  on  which  history,  draw 
ing  the  sundered  parts  of  the  earth  slowly  together, 
moves  to  that  great  consummation  when  the  best  that 
has  at  any  time  been  in  the  world  shall  be  the  portion 
of  every  man  born  into  it.  If  the  old  English  blood, 
which  here  on  this  soil  gave  birth  to  a  nation,  spread 
civilization  through  it,  and  cast  the  orbit  of  its  starry 
course  in  time,  is  destined  to  be  thus  absorbed  and  lost 
in  the  nation  which  it  has  formed,  we  should  be  proud 
and  happy  in  such  a  fate;  for  this  is  to  wear  the  seal  of 
God's  election  hi  history.  Nay,  if  the  aristocracy  of  the 
whole  white  race  is  so  to  melt  in  a  world  of  the  colored 
races  of  the  earth,  I  for  one  should  only  rejoice  in  such 
a  divine  triumph  of  the  sacrificial  idea  in  history;  for 
it  would  mean  the  humanization  of  mankind. 

Unless  this  principle  is  strongly  grasped,  unless  there 
be  an  imperishable  relation  in  man  and  his  works  which 
they  contain,  and  which,  though  it  has  other  phases,  here 
appears  in  this  eternal  salvage  stored  up  in  a  slowly  per 
fecting  race,  history  through  its  length  and  breadth  is 
a  spectacle  to  appall  and  terrify  the  reason.  The  per 
petual  flux  of  time  — 

"Scepters,  tiaras,  swords,  and  chains,  and  tomes 
Of  reasoned  wrong,  glozed  on  by  ignorance"  — 


6  THE   TORCH 

is  a  mere  catastrophe  of  blood  and  error  unless  its  mighty 
subverting  and  dismaying  changes  are  related  to  some 
thing  which  does  not  pass  away  with  dethroned  gods, 
abandoned  empires  and  repealed  codes  of  law  and  morals. 
But  in  the  extinction  of  religions,  in  imperial  revolu 
tions,  in  the  bloody  conflict  of  ideas,  there  is  one  thing 
found  stable;  it  is  the  mind  itself,  growing  through  ages. 
That  which  in  its  continuity  we  call  the  human  spirit, 
abides.  Men,  tribes,  states  disappear,  but  the  race-mind 
endures.  A  conception  of  the  world  and  an  emotional 
response  thereto  constitute  the  life  of  the  race-mind,  and 
fill  its  consciousness  with  ideas  and  feelings,  but  in  these 
there  is  no  element  of  chance,  contingency  or  frailty; 
they  are  master-ideas,  master-emotions,  clothed  with 
the  power  of  a  long  reign  over  men,  and  imposing  them 
selves  upon  each  new  generation  almost  with  the  yoke 
of  necessity.  What  I  designated  as  the  race-mind  — 
the  sole  thing  permanent  in  history  —  is  this  potential 
ity  of  thought  and  feeling,  in  any  age,  realizing  itself 
in  states  of  mind  and  habits  of  action  long  established 
in  the  race,  deeply  inherited,  and  slowly  modified.  The 
race-mind  is  the  epitome  of  the  past.  It  contains  all 
human  energy,  knowledge,  experience,  that  survives.  It 
is  the  resultant  of  millions  of  lives  whose  earthly  power 
it  stores  in  one  deathless  force. 

This  race-mind  is  simply  formed.  Life  presents  cer 
tain  permanent  aspects  in  the  environment,  which  gen 
erates  ways  of  behavior  thereto,  normal  and  general 
among  men.  The  world  is  a  multiplicity,  a  harvest- 
field,  a  battle-ground;  and  thence  arises  through  human 
contact  ways  of  numbering,  or  mathematics,  ways  of 
tillage,  or  agriculture,  ways  of  fighting,  or  military  tac 
tics  and  strategy,  and  these  are  incorporated  in  individ- 


MAN   AND   THE   RACE  7 

uals  as  habits  of  life.  The  craftsman  has  the  mind  of 
his  craft.  Life  also  presents  certain  other  permanent 
internal  aptitudes  in  the  soul,  whence  arises  the  mind  of 
the  artist,  the  inventor,  the  poet.  But  this  cast  of  mind 
of  the  mathematician  or  of  the  painter  is  rather  a  phase 
of  individual  life.  In  the  larger  unit  of  the  race,  en 
vironment  and  aptitude,  working  together  in  the  historic 
life  of  ages,  develop  ideas,  moods  and  energies  character 
istic  of  the  race  in  which  they  occur.  In  the  sphere  of 
ideas,  freedom  is  indissolubly  linked  with  the  English, 
righteousness  with  the  Hebrew;  in  the  temperamental 
sphere,  a  signal  instance  is  the  Celtic  genius  —  mystery, 
twilight,  supernatural  fantasy,  lamentation,  tragic  dis 
aster;  or  the  Greek  genius  —  definiteness,  proportioned 
beauty,  ordered  science,  philosophic  principle;  and,  in 
the  sphere  of  energy,  land  and  gold  hunger,  and  that 
strange  soul-hunger  —  hunger  to  possess  the  souls  of 
men  —  which  is  at  the  root  of  all  propagandism,  have 
been  motive  powers  in  many  races. 

Thus,  in  one  part  or  another  of  time  and  place,  and 
from  causes  within  and  without,  the  race,  coming  to  its 
best,  flowers  in  some  creative  hope,  ripens  in  some  shap 
ing  thought,  glows  in  some  resistless  enthusiasm.  Each 
of  these  in  its  own  time  holds  an  age  in  its  grasp.  They 
seize  on  men  and  shape  them  in  multitudes  to  their  will, 
as  the  wind  drives  the  locusts;  make  men  hideous  ascet 
ics,  send  them  on  forlorn  voyages,  devote  them  to  the 
block  and  the  stake,  make  Argonauts,  Crusaders,  Lol 
lards  of  them,  fill  Europe  in  one  age  with  a  riot  of 
revolution  and  in  the  next  with  the  camps  of  tyrannic 
power.  These  ideas,  moods,  energies  have  mysterious 
potency;  they  seem  to  possess  an  independent  being; 
though,  like  all  the  phenomena  of  life-energy  they  are 


8  THE   TORCH 

self -limited,  the  period  of  their  growth,  culmination  and 
decline  extends  through  generations  and  centuries;  they 
seem  less  the  brood  of  man's  mind  than  higher  powers 
that  feed  on  men.  They  are  surrounded  by  a  cloud 
of  witnesses  —  fanatics,  martyrs,  dupes;  they  doom 
whole  peoples  to  glory  or  shame;  in  the  undying  battle 
of  the  soul  they  are  the  choosers  of  the  slain.  Though 
they  proceed  from  the  human  spirit,  they  rule  it;  and 
in  life  they  are  the  spiritual  presences  which  are  most 
closely  unveiled  to  the  apprehension,  devotion  and  love 
of  men. 

The  race-mind  building  itself  from  immemorial  time 
out  of  this  mystery  of  thought  and  passion,  as  genera 
tion  after  generation  kneels  and  fights  and  fades,  takes 
unerringly  the  best  that  anywhere  comes  to  be  in  the 
world,  holds  to  it  with  the  cling  of  fate,  and  lets  all  else 
fall  to  oblivion;  out  of  this  best  it  has  made,  and  still 
fashions,  that  enduring  world  of  idea  and  emotion  into 
which  we  are  born  as  truly  as  into  the  natural  world. 
It  has  a  marvelous  economy. 

"One  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
The  heedless  world  has  never  lost." 

Egypt,  India,  Greece  and  Rome,  Italy,  the  English, 
France,  America,  the  Turk,  the  Persian,  the  Russian, 
the  Japanese,  the  Chinese,  the  Negro  feed  its  pure  tra 
dition  of  what  excellence  is  possible  to  the  race-mind, 
and  has  grown  habitual  in  its  being;  and,  as  in  the  old 
myth,  it  destroys  its  parent,  abolishing  all  these  differ 
ences  of  climate,  epoch  and  skull.  The  race-mind  uni 
fies  the  race  which  it  preserves;  that  is  its  irresistible 
line  of  advance.  It  wipes  out  ihe  barriers  of  time, 
language  and  country.  It  undoes  the  mischief  of  Babel, 


MAN   AND   THE    RACE  9 

and  restores  to  mankind  one  tongue  in  which  all  things 
can  be  understood  by  all  men.  It  fuses  the  Bibles  of 
all  nations  in  one  wisdom  and  one  practice.  It  knocks 
off  the  tribal  fetters  of  caste  and  creed;  and,  substitut 
ing  thought  for  blood  as  the  bond  of  the  world,  it  slowly 
liberates  that  free  soul,  which  is  one  in  all  men  and  com 
mon  to  all  mankind.  To  free  the  soul  in  the  individual 
life,  and  to  accomplish  the  unity  of  mankind  —  that  is 
its  work. 

To  share  in  this  work  is  the  peculiar  and  characteris 
tic  office  of  literature.  This  fusion  of  the  nations  of 
the  earth,  this  substitution  of  the  thought-tie  for  the 
blood-tie,  this  enfranchisement  of  the  soul,  is  its  chief 
function;  for  literature  is  the  organ  of  the  race-mind. 
That  is  why  literature  is  immortal.  Though  man's  in 
heritance  is  bequeathed  in  many  ways  —  the  size  and 
shape  of  the  skull,  the  physical  predisposition  of  the 
body,  oral  tradition,  monumental  and  artistic  works, 
institutions  —  civilization  ever  depends  in  an  increasing 
degree  upon  literature  both  for  expression  and  tradition; 
and  whatever  other  forms  the  race-mind  may  mold  itself 
into,  literature  is  its  most  universal  and  comprehensive 
form.  That  is  why  literature  is  the  great  conservator  of 
society.  It  shares  in  the  life  of  the  race-mind,  partakes 
of  its  nature,  as  language  does  of  thought,  corresponds 
to  it  accurately,  duplicates  it,  is  its  other-self.  It  is 
through  literature  mainly  that  we  know  the  race-mind, 
and  come  to  possess  it;  for  though  the  term  may  seem 
abstract,  the  thing  is  real.  Men  of  genius  are  great  in 
proportion  as  they  share  in  it,  and  national  literatures 
are  great  in  proportion  as  they  embody  and  express  it. 
Brunetiere,  the  present  critic  of  France,  has  recently  an 
nounced  a  new  literary  formula.  He  declares  that  there 


io  THE   TORCH 

is  a  European  literature,  not  the  combined  group  of  na 
tional  literatures,  but  a  single  literature  common  to 
European  civilization,  and  that  national  literatures  in 
their  periods  of  culmination,  are  great  in  proportion  as 
they  coincide  for  the  time  being  with  this  common  litera 
ture,  feed  it,  and,  one  after  another  taking  the  lead, 
create  it.  The  declaration  is  a  gleam  of  self-conscious 
ness  in  the  unity  of  Europe.  How  slowly  the  parts  of  a 
nation  recognize  the  integrity  of  their  territory  and  the 
community  of  their  interests  is  one  of  the  constant  les 
sons  of  history;  the  Greek  confederation,  the  work  of 
Alfred  or  of  Bismarck,  our  own  experience  in  the  Revo 
lutionary  period  illustrate  it;  so  the  unity  of  Europe  is 
still  half-obscure  and  dark,  though  Catholicism,  the  Re 
naissance,  the  Reformation,  the  Revolution  in  turn 
flashed  this  unity  forth,  struggling  to  realize  itself  in 
the  common  civilization.  The  literature  of  Europe  is 
the  expression  of  this  common  genius  —  the  best  that 
man  has  dreamed  or  thought  or  done,  has  found  or  been 
in  Europe  —  now  more  brilliant  in  one  capital,  now  in 
another  as  the  life  ebbs  from  state  to  state,  and  is  re 
newed;  for,  though  it  fail  here  or  there,  it  never  ceases. 
This  is  the  burning  of  the  race-mind,  now  bright  along  the 
Seine,  the  Rhine  and  the  Thames,  as  once  by  the  Ganges 
and  the  Tiber.  The  true  unity  of  literature,  however, 
does  not  lie  in  the  literature  of  Europe  or  of  India  or  of 
antiquity,  or  in  any  one  manifestation,  but  in  that  world- 
literature  which  is  the  organ  of  the  race-mind  in  its 
entire  breadth  and  wholeness.  The  new  French  formula 
is  a  brilliant  application,  novel,  striking  and  arresting, 
of  the  old  and  familiar  idea  that  civilization  in  its  evo 
lution  in  history  is  a  single  process,  continuous,  advanc 
ing  and  integral,  of  which  nations  and  ages  are  only  the 


MAN   AND   THE   RACE  n 

successive  phases.  The  life  of  the  spirit  in  mankind  is 
one  and  universal,  burns  with  the  same  fires,  moves  to 
the  same  issues,  joins  in  a  single  history;  it  is  the  race- 
mind  realizing  itself  cumulatively  in  time,  and  mainly 
through  the  inheriting  power  of  great  literature. 

I  have  developed  this  conception  of  the  race-mind  at 
some  length  because  it  is  a  primary  idea.  The  nature  of 
literature,  and  the  perspective  and  interaction  of  partic 
ular  literatures,  are  best  comprehended  in  its  light.  I 
emphasize  it.  The  world-literature,  national  literatures, 
individual  men  of  genius,  are  what  they  are  by  virtue 
of  sharing  in  the  race-mind,  appropriating  it  and  identi 
fying  themselves  with  it;  and  what  is  true  of  them, 
on  the  great  scale  and  in  a  high  degree,  is  true  also  of 
every  man  who  is  born  into  the  world.  A  man  is  a  man 
by  participating  in  the  race-mind.  Education  is  merely 
the  process  by  which  he  enters  it,  avails  himself  of  it, 
absorbs  it.  In  the  things  of  material  civilization  this 
is  plain.  All  the  callings  of  men,  arts,  crafts,  trades, 
sciences,  professions,  the  entire  round  of  practical  life, 
have  a  body  of  knowledge  and  method  of  work  which 
are  like  gospel  and  ritual  to  them;  apprentice,  journey 
man  and  master  are  the  stages  of  their  career;  and  if 
anything  be  added,  from  life  to  life,  it  is  on  a  basis  of 
ascertained  fact,  of  orthodox  doctrine  and  fixed  practice. 
I  suppose  technical  education  is  most  uniform,  and  by 
definiteness  of  aim  and  economy  of  method  is  most  effi 
cient;  and  in  the  professions  as  well  as  in  the  arts  and 
crafts  competition  places  so  high  a  premium  on  knowl 
edge  and  skill  that  the  mastery  of  all  the  past  can  teach 
is  compulsory  in  a  high  degree.  Similarly,  in  society, 
the  material  unities  such  as  those  which  commerce, 
manufacturing,  banking  establish  and  spread,  are  soon- 


12  THE  TORCH 

est  evident  and  most  readily  accepted;  so  true  is  this 
that  the  peace  of  the  world  is  rather  a  matter  of  finance 
than  of  Christianity.  These  practical  activities  and  the 
interests  that  spring  out  of  them  lie  in  the  sphere  of 
material  civilization;  but  the  race-mind,  positive,  endur 
ing  and  beneficent  as  it  is  in  that  sphere,  is  there  par 
celed  out  and  individualized,  and  gives  a  particular  and 
almost  private  character  to  man  and  classes  of  men,  and 
it  seeks  a  material  good.  There  is  another  and  spiritual 
sphere  in  which  the  soul  which  is  one  and  the  same  in 
all  men  comes  to  self-knowledge,  has  its  training,  and 
achieves  its  mastery  of  the  world.  Essential,  universal 
manhood  is  found  only  here;  for  it  is  here  that  the  race- 
mind,  by  participation  in  which  a  man  is  a  man,  en 
franchises  the  soul  and  gives  to  it  the  citizenship  of  the 
world.  Education  in  the  things  of  the  spirit  is  often 
vague  in  aim  and  may  seem  wasteful  in  method,  and 
it  is  not  supported  by  the  thrust  and  impetus  of  physi 
cal  need  and  worldly  hope;  but  it  exists  in  all  men  in 
some  measure,  for  no  one  born  in  our  civilization  is 
left  so  savage,  no  savage  born  in  the  wild  is  left  so 
primitive  but  that  he  holds  a  mental  attitude,  however 
obscure,  toward  nature,  man  and  God,  and  has  some 
discipline,  however  initial,  in  beauty,  love  and  religion. 
These  things  lie  in  the  sphere  of  this  soul.  It  is,  never 
theless,  true  that  the  greatest  inequalities  of  condition 
exist  here,  and  not  in  that  part  of  life  where  good  is 
measured  by  the  things  of  fortune.  The  difference  be 
tween  the  outcast  and  the  millionaire  is  as  nothing  to 
that  between  the  saint  and  the  criminal,  the  fool  and 
the  knower,  the  boor  and  the  poet.  It  is  a  blessing 
in  our  civilization,  and  one  worthy  of  the  hand  of  Provi 
dence,  that  if  in  material  things  justice  be  a  laggard  and 


MAN   AND   THE   RACE  13 

disparities  of  condition  be  hard  to  remedy,  the  roads  to 
church  and  school  are  public  highways,  free  to  all. 
This  charter  of  free  education  in  the  life  of  the  soul, 
which  is  the  supreme  opportunity  of  an  American  life, 
is  an  open  door  to  the  treasury  of  man's  spirit.  There 
whosoever  will  shall  open  the  book  of  all  the  world, 
and  read  and  ponder,  and  shall  enter  the  common  mind 
of  man  which  is  there  contained  and  avail  of  its  wisdom 
and  absorb  its  energies  into  his  own  and  become  one 
with  it  in  insight,  power  and  hope,  and  ere  he  is  aware 
shall  find  himself  mingling  with  the  wisest,  the  holiest, 
the  loveliest,  as  their  comrade  and  peer.  He  shall  have 
poet  and  sage  to  sup  with  him,  and  their  meal  shall  be 
the  bread  of  life. 

What,  then,  is  the  position  of  the  youth  —  of  any 
man  whose  infinite  life  lies  before  him  —  at  his  entrance 
on  this  education,  on  this  attempt  to  become  one  with 
the  mind  of  the  race?  and,  to  neglect  the  material  side 
of  life,  what  is  the  process  by  which  he  begins  to  live 
in  the  spirit,  and  not  as  one  new-born,  but  even  in  his 
youth  sharing  in  the  wisdom  and  disciplined  power  of 
a  soul  that  has  lived  through  all  human  ages  —  the  soul 
of  mankind?  We  forget  the  beginnings  of  life;  we  for 
get  first  sensation,  first  action,  and  the  unknown  magic 
by  which,  as  the  nautilus  builds  its  shell,  we  built  out  of 
these  early  elements  this  world  of  the  impalpable  blue 
walls,  the  ocean  and  prairie  floors,  and  star-sown  space, 
each  one  of  us  for  ourselves.  There  is  a  thought,  which 
I  suppose  is  a  commonplace  and  may  be  half-trivial, 
but  it  is  one  that  took  hold  of  me  in  boyhood  with  great 
tenacity,  and  stirred  the  sense  of  strangeness  and  marvel 
in  life;  the  idea  that  all  I  knew  or  should  ever  know  was 
through  something  that  had  touched  my  body.  The 


i4  THE   TORCH 

ether-wave  envelops  us  as  the  ocean,  and  in  that  small 
surface  of  contact  is  the  sphere  of  sensibility  —  of  light, 
sound,  and  the  rest  —  out  of  which  arises  the  world 
which  each  one  of  us  perceives.  It  seems  a  fantastic 
conception,  but  it  is  a  true  one.  For  me  the  idea 
seemed  to  shrink  the  world  to  the  dark  envelope  of  my 
own  body.  It  served,  however,  to  initiate  me  in  the 
broader  conception  that  the  soul  is  the  center,  and  that 
life  —  the  world  — radiates  from  it  into  the  enclosing 
infinite.  Wordsworth,  you  remember,  in  his  famous 
image  of  our  infancy  presents  the  matter  differently; 
for  him  the  infant  began  with  the  infinite,  and  boy  and 
man  lived  in  an  ever  narrowing  world,  a  contracting 
prison,  like  that  fabled  one  of  the  Inquisition,  and  in 
the  end  life  became  a  thing  common  and  finite: 

"Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy! 
Shades  of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close 

Upon  the  growing  boy, 
But  he  beholds  the  light,  and  whence  it  flows, 

He  sees  it  in  his  joy: 

At  length  the  man  perceives  it  die  away, 
And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day." 

This  was  never  my  own  conception,  nor  do  I  think  it  is 
natural  to  many  men.  On  the  contrary,  life  is  an  expan 
sion.  The  sense  of  the  larger  world  comes  first,  per 
haps,  in  those  unremembered  years  when  the  sky  ceases 
to  be  an  inverted  bowl,  and  lifts  off  from  the  earth.  The 
experience  is  fixed  for  me  by  another  half-childish 
memory,  the  familiar  verses  of  Tom  Hood  in  which  he 
describes  his  early  home.  You  will  recall  the  almost 
nursery  rhymes: 


MAN   AND   THE   RACE  15 

"I  remember,  I  remember 

The  fir-trees  dark  and  high; 
I  used  to  think  their  slender  tops 

Were  close  against  the  sky; 
It  was  a  childish  ignorance, 

But  now  't  is  little  joy 
To  know  I'm  farther  off  from  Heaven 

Than  when  I  was  a  boy." 

Sentiment  in  the  place  of  philosophy,  the  thought  is  the 
same  as  Wordsworth's,  but  the  image  is  natural  and 
true.  The  noblest  image,  however,  that  sets  forth  the 
spread  of  the  world,  is  in  that  famous  sonnet  by  an  ob 
scure  poet,  Blanco  White,  describing  the  first  time  that 
the  sun  went  down  in  Paradise: 

"Mysterious  night!  when  our  first  parent  knew 
Thee  from  report  divine,  and  heard  thy  name, 
Did  he  not  tremble  for  this  lovely  frame, 

This  glorious  canopy  of  light  and  blue? 

Yet,  'neath  the  curtain  of  translucent  dew, 
Bathed  in  the  rays  of  the  great  setting  flame, 
Hesperus  with  the  host  of  heaven  came, 

And  lo!  creation  widened  in  man's  view." 

The  theory  of  Copernicus  and  the  voyage  of  Columbus 
are  the  great  historical  moments  of  such  change  in  the 
thoughts  of  men.  As  travel  thus  discloses  the  amplitude 
of  the  planet  and  science  fills  the  infinite  of  space  for  the 
learning  mind,  history  in  its  turn  peoples  the  "dark 
background  and  abysm  of  time."  But  more  marvelous 
than  the  unveiling  of  time  and  space,  is  that  last  revela 
tion  which  unlocks  the  inward  world  of  idea  and  emotion, 
and  gives  solidity  to  life  as  by  a  third  dimension.  It  is 
this  world  which  is  the  realm  of  imaginative  literature; 
scarcely  by  any  other  interpreter  shall  a  man  come  into 
knowledge  of  it  with  any  adequacy;  and  here  the  sub- 


16  THE   TORCH 

ject  draws  to  a  head,  for  it  is  by  the  operation  of  litera 
ture  in  this  regard  that  the  race-mind  takes  possession 
of  the  world. 

We  are  plunged  at  birth  in  medias  res,  as  the  phrase 
is,  into  the  midst  of  things  —  into  a  world  already  old,  of 
old  ideas,  old  feelings,  old  experience,  that  has  drunk 
to  the  lees  the  wisdom  of  the  teacher  of  Ecclesiastes, 
and  renews  hi  millions  of  lives  the  life  that  has  been 
lived  a  million  times;  a  world  of  custom  and  usage,  of 
immemorial  habits,  of  causes  prejudged,  of  insoluble 
problems,  of  philosophies  and  orthodoxies  and  things 
established;  and  yet,  too,  a  world  of  the  undiscovered. 
The  youth  awakes  in  this  world,  intellectually,  in  litera 
ture;  and  since  the  literature  of  the  last  age  is  that  on 
which  the  new  generation  is  formed,  he  now  first  comes 
in  contact  with  the  large  life  of  mankind  in  the  litera 
ture  of  the  last  century.  It  is  an  extraordinary  miscel 
laneous  literature,  varied  and  copious  in  matter,  full  of 
conflicting  ideas,  cardinal  truths,  and  hazardous  guesses; 
and  for  the  young  mind  the  problem  of  orientation  — 
that  is  of  finding  itself,  of  knowing  the  true  East,  is 
difficult.  Literature,  too,  has  an  electric  stimulation, 
and  in  the  first  onrush  of  the  intellectual  life  brings 
that  well-known  storm  and  stress  which  is  the  true 
awakening;  with  eager  and  delighted  surprise  the  soul 
feels  fresh  sensibilities  and  unsuspected  energies  rise  in 
its  being.  It  is  a  time  of  shocks,  discoveries,  experiences 
that  change  the  face  of  the  world.  Reading  the  poets, 
the  youth  finds  new  dynamos  in  himself.  A  new  truth 
unseals  a  new  faculty  in  him;  a  new  writer  unlooses  a 
new  force  in  him;  he  becomes,  like  Briar eus,  hundred- 
handed,  like  Shakespeare,  myriad-minded.  So  like  a 
miracle  is  the  discovery  of  the  power  of  life. 


MAN   AND   THE   RACE  17 

Let  me  illustrate  the  experience  in  the  given  case  — 
the  literature  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  will  all  fall 
under  three  heads:  the  world  of  nature's  frame,  the 
world  of  man's  action,  the  world  of  God's  being.  Na 
ture  is,  in  the  first  instance,  a  spectacle.  One  may  see 
the  common  sights  of  earth,  and  still  have  seen  little. 
The  young  eye  requires  to  be  trained  in  what  to  see, 
what  to  choose  to  see  out  of  the  vague  whole,  and  so 
to  see  his  true  self  reflected  there  in  another  form,  for 
in  the  same  landscape  the  farmer,  the  military  engineer, 
the  painter  see  each  a  different  picture.  Burns  teaches 
the  young  heart  to  see  nature  realistically,  definitely,  in 
hard  outline,  and  always  in  association  with  human  life 
—  and  the  presence  of  animals  friendly  and  serviceable 
to  man,  the  life  of  the  farm,  is  a  dominant  note  in  the 
scene.  Byron  guides  the  eye  to  elemental  grandeur  in 
the  storm  and  in  the  massiveness  of  Alp  and  ocean. 
Shelley  brings  out  color  and  atmosphere  and  evokes 
the  luminous  spirit  from  every  star  and  dew-drop  and 
dying  wave.  Tennyson  makes  nature  an  artist's  easel 
where  from  poem  to  poem  glows  the  frescoing  of  the 
walls  of  life.  Thus  changing  from  page  to  page  the 
youth  sees  nature  with  Burns  as  a  man  who  sympathizes 
with  human  toil,  with  Byron  as  a  man  who  would  mate 
with  the  tempest,  with  Shelley  as  a  man  of  almost  spiri 
tualized  senses,  with  Tennyson  as  a  man  of  artistic 
luxury.  Again,  nature  is  an  order,  a  law  in  matter,  such 
as  science  conceives  her;  and  this  phase  appears  incep- 
tively  in  "Queen  Mab"  and  explicitly  in  "In  Memoriam," 
and  many  a  minor  poem  of  Tennyson,  not  the  less  great 
because  minor  in  his  work,  in  which  alone  the  scientific 
spirit  of  the  age  has  found  utterance  equal  to  its  own 
sublimity.  Yet,  again,  nature  is  a  symbol,  an  expres- 


i8  THE   TORCH 

sion  of  truth  itself  in  another  medium  than  thought;  and 
so,  in  minute  ways,  Burns  moralized  the  "Mountain 
Daisy,"  and  Wordsworth  the  "Small  Celandine";  and, 
on  the  grand  scale,  Shelley  mythologized  nature  in  vast 
oracular  figures  of  man's  faith,  hope,  and  destiny.  And 
again,  nature  is  a  molding  influence  so  close  to  human 
life  as  to  be  a  spiritual  presence  about  and  within  it. 
This  last  feeling  of  the  participation  of  nature  in  life 
is  so  fundamental  that  no  master  of  song  is  without  it; 
but,  in  this  group,  Wordsworth  is  pre-eminent  as  its 
exponent,  with  such  directness,  certainty  and  power  did 
he  seize  and  express  it.  What  he  saw  in  dalesmen  was 
what  the  mountains  had  made  them;  what  he  told  in 
"Tintern  Abbey"  was  nature's  making  of  him;  what  he 
sang  in  his  lyric  of  ideal  womanhood  was  such  an  inti 
macy  of  nature  with  woman's  being  that  it  was  scarcely 
to  be  divided  from  her  spirit.  The  power  which  fashions 
us  from  birth,  sustains  the  vital  force  of  the  body,  and 
feeds  its  growing  functions,  seems  to  exceed  the  blind 
and  mute  region  of  matter,  and  feeding  the  senses  with 
color,  music  and  delight  shapes  the  soul  itself  and  guides 
it,  and  supports  and  consoles  the  child  it  has  created 
in  mortality.  I  do  not  overstate  Wordsworth's  sense  of 
this  truth;  and  it  is  a  truth  that  twines  about  the  roots 
of  all  poetry  like  a  river  of  life.  It  explains  to  the  grow 
ing  boy  something  in  his  own  history,  and  he  goes  on  in 
the  paths  he  has  begun  to  follow,  it  may  be  with  touches 
of  vague  mystery  but  with  an  expectant,  receptive  and 
responsive  heart.  In  regard  to  nature,  then,  the  youth's 
life  under  the  favor  of  these  poets  appreciates  her  in 
at  least  these  four  ways,  artistically,  scientifically,  sym 
bolically  and  spiritually,  and  begins  to  fix  in  molds  of 
his  own  spirit  that  miracle  of  change,  the  Protean  being 
of  matter. 


MAN   AND    THE    RACE  19 

To  turn  to  the  world  of  man's  life,  the  simplest  gain 
from  contact  with  this  literature  of  which  I  am  speaking 
is  in  the  education  of  the  historic  sense.  Romance  dis 
covered  history,  and  seeking  adventure  and  thriving  on 
what  it  sought,  made  that  great  find,  the  Middle  Ages, 
which  the  previous  time  looked  on  much  as  we  regard 
the  civilization  of  China  with  mingled  ignorance  and 
contempt.  It  found  also  the  Gael  and  the  Northmen, 
and  many  an  outlying  region,  many  a  buried  tract  of 
time.  In  Scott's  novels  characteristically,  but  also  in 
countless  others,  in  the  rescued  and  revived  ballad  of 
England  and  the  North,  and  in  the  renewed  forms  of 
Greek  imagination,  the  historic  sense  is  strongly  drawn 
on,  and  no  reader  can  escape  its  culture,  for  the  place 
of  history  and  its  inspirational  power  in  literature  is 
fundamental  in  the  spirit  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
But  what  most  arrests  the  young  heart,  in  this  world 
of  man's  life,  is  those  ideas  which  we  sum  up  as  the 
Revolution,  and  the  principle  of  democracy  which  is 
primary  in  the  literature  of  the  last  age.  There  the 
three  great  words  —  liberty,  fraternity  and  equality  — 
and  the  theory  that  in  Shelley  was  so  burning  an  enthusi 
asm  and  in  Byron  so  passionate  a  force,  are  still  aflame; 
and  the  new  feeling  toward  man  which  was  implicit  in 
democracy  is  deeply  planted  in  that  aspect  of  fraternity 
which  appears  in  the  interest  in  the  common  lot,  and  in 
that  aspect  of  liberty  which  appears  in  the  sense  of  the 
dignity  of  the  individual.  Burns,  Scott,  Dickens  illus 
trate  the  one;  Byron,  Shelley  and  Carlyle  the  other. 
The  literature  of  the  great  watchwords,  the  literature 
of  the  life  of  the  humble  classes,  the  literature  of  the 
rebellious  individual  will  —  the  latter  flashing  out  many 
a  wild  career  and  exploding  many  a  startling  theory  of 


20  THE   TORCH 

how  life  is  to  be  lived  —  are  the  very  core  and  substance 
of  the  time.  The  application  of  ideas  to  life  in  the  large, 
of  which  Rousseau  was  so  cardinal  an  example,  opens 
an  endless  field  in  a  century  so  rich  in  discovery,  so 
active  in  intellect  and  so  plastic  in  morals;  and  here  one 
may  wander  at  will.  Here  is  matter  for  a  lifetime.  But 
without  particularizing,  it  is  plain  how  variously,  how 
profoundly  and  vividly  through  this  literature  the  mind 
is  exercised  in  the  human  world,  takes  on  the  color,  pic- 
turesqueness  and  movement  of  history,  builds  up  the 
democratic  social  faith  and  develops  the  energy  of  in 
dividual  freedom,  and  becomes  a  place  for  the  career  of 
great  ideas. 

There  remains  the  world  of  God's  being,  or  to  vary 
the  phrase  in  sympathy  with  the  mode  of  approach  char 
acteristic  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  world  in  which 
God  is.  It  may  be  broadly  stated  that  the  notion  of 
what  used  to  be  called  an  absentee  God,  a  far-off  Ruler 
overseeing  by  modes  analogous  to  human  administra 
tion  the  affairs  of  earth  as  a  distant  province,  finds  no 
place  in  this  literature  of  the  last  age.  The  note  of 
thought  is  rather  of  the  intimacy  of  God  with  his  crea 
tion  and  with  the  soul  of  man.  God  is  known  in  two 
ways;  as  an  idea  in  the  intellect  and  as  an  experience  in 
the  emotions;  and  in  poetry  the  two  modes  blend,  and 
often  blur  where  they  blend.  Their  habitual  expression 
in  the  great  poets  of  the  age  is  in  pantheistic  forms,  but 
this  is  rather  a  matter  of  form  than  of  substance.  The 
immanence  of  the  divine  is  the  root-idea;  in  Wordsworth 
it  is  an  immanence  of  sublime  power,  seized  through  com 
munion  with  nature;  in  Shelley,  who  was  more  pro 
foundly  human,  it  is  an  immanence  of  transcendent  love, 
seized  through  his  sense  of  the  destiny  of  the  universe 


MAN   AND   THE   RACE  21 

that  carries  in  its  bosom  the  glory  of  life;  in  Tennyson, 
in  whom  the  sense  of  a  veiled  intellect  was  more  deep, 
it  is  an  immanence  of  mystery  in  both  the  outer  and  the 
inner  world.  In  other  parts  of  the  field,  God  is  also  con 
ceived  in  history,  and  there  immanent  as  Providence. 
His  immanence  in  the  individual  —  a  matter  dark  to 
any  thought  —  is  most  explicitly  set  forth  by  Emerson. 
It  is  perhaps  generally  considered  that  in  the  literature 
of  the  nineteenth  century  there  is  a  large  sceptical  and 
atheistic  element;  but  this  is  an  error.  Genius  by  its 
own  nature  has  no  part  in  the  spirit  that  denies;  it  is 
positive,  affirms  and  creates.  Its  apparent  denials  will 
be  found  to  be  partial,  and  affect  fragments  of  a  dead 
past  only;  its  denials  are,  in  reality,  higher  and  more 
universal  affirmations.  If  Wordsworth  appears  to  put 
nature  in  the  place  of  God,  or  Shelley  love,  or  Keats 
beauty,  they  only  affirm  that  phase  of  the  divine  which 
is  nighest  to  their  own  apprehension,  affection  and  de 
light.  Their  experience  of  the  divine  governs  and  blends 
with  their  intellectual  theory,  sometimes,  as  I  have  said, 
with  a  blur  of  thought.  Each  one's  experience  in  these 
things  is  for  himself  alone,  and  private;  the  ways  of 
the  Spirit  no  man  knows;  but  it  is  manifest  that  for 
the  opening  mind,  whether  of  youth  or  of  older  years, 
the  sense  of  eternity,  however  delicate,  subtle  and  silent 
is  its  realm,  is  fed  nobly,  sweetly  and  happily,  by  these 
poets  in  whom  the  spirit  of  man  crying  for  expression 
unlocks  the  secrecy  of  its  relations  to  the  infinite. 

Such  is  the  nature  of  the  contact  of  the  mind  with 
literature  by  means  of  which  it  enters  on  its  race  inheri 
tance  of  idea  and  emotion,  takes  possession  of  the  stored 
results,  clothes  itself  with  energies  whose  springs  are  in 
the  earliest  distance  of  time,  and  builds  up  anew  for  it- 


22  THE   TORCH 

self  the  whole  and  various  world  as  it  has  come  to  be 
known  by  man  in  his  age-long  experience.  The  illus 
tration  I  have  employed  minimizes  the  constancy,  the 
completeness,  the  vastness  of  the  process;  for  it  takes  no 
account  of  other  disciplines,  of  religious  tradition  and 
practice,  of  oral  transmission,  and  of  such  universal  and 
intimate  formative  powers  as  mere  language.  But  it  will 
be  found  on  analysis  that  all  of  these  depend,  in  the 
main,  on  literature  in  the  broad  sense;  and,  in  the  educa 
tion  of  the  soul  in  the  higher  life,  the  awakening,  the  re 
vealing  and  upbuilding  force  lies,  I  am  persuaded,  in  the 
peculiar  charge  of  literature  in  which  the  race-mind  has 
stamped  an  image  of  itself. 

It  is  obvious  that  what  I  have  advanced,  brings  the 
principle  of  authority  into  a  cardinal  place  in  life,  and 
clothes  tradition  with  great  power.  It  might  seem  that 
the  individual  in  becoming  one  with  the  race-mind  has 
only  to  endue  himself  with  the  past  as  with  a  garment, 
to  take  its  mold  with  the  patience  of  clay,  and  to  be  in 
the  issue  a  recast  of  the  past,  thinking  old  thoughts, 
feeling  old  emotions,  doing  old  actions,  in  pre-established 
ways.  But  this  is  to  misconceive  the  process  by  which 
the  individual  effects  this  union;  he  does  not  take  the 
impress  of  the  race-mind  as  the  wax  receives  the  imprint 
of  the  seal.  This  union  is  an  act  of  life,  a  process  of 
energy,  joy  and  growth,  of  self-expression;  here  learning 
is  living,  and  there  is  no  other  way  to  know  the  doctrine 
than  to  do  its  will;  so  the  race-mind  is  not  copied,  but 
is  perpetually  re-born  in  men,  and  the  world  which  each 
one  of  us  thus  builds  for  himself  out  of  his  preferred 
capacities,  memories  and  desires  —  our  farmer's,  engi 
neer's,  painter's  world,  as  I  have  said  —  is  his  own  origi 
nal  and  unique  world.  There  is  none  like  it,  none. 


MAN   AND   THE   RACE  23 

Originality  consists  in  this  re-birth  of  the  world  in  the 
young  soul.  This  world,  nevertheless,  the  world  of  each 
of  us,  is  not  one  of  willfulness,  fantasy  and  caprice;  if, 
on  the  one  hand,  it  is  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of, 
on  the  other  it  is  the  stuff  of  necessity.  It  has  a  con 
sistency,  a  law  and  fate,  of  its  own,  which  supports,  wields 
and  sustains  it.  Authority  is  no  more  than  the  recog 
nition  of  and  obedience  to  this  underlying  principle  of 
being,  whose  will  is  disclosed  to  us  in  man's  life  so  far 
as  that  life  in  its  wholeness  falls  within  our  view;  in 
knowledge  of  this  will  all  wisdom  consists,  of  its  action 
in  us  all  experience  is  woven,  and  in  union  with  it  all 
private  judgment  is  confirmed.  Authority,  truly  inter 
preted,  is  only  another  phase  of  that  identity  of  the  soul 
in  all  men  by  virtue  of  which  society  exists,  and  espe 
cially  that  intellectual  state  arises,  that  state  which  used 
to  be  called  the  republic  of  letters  and  which  is  the  insti 
tution  of  the  race-mind  to  be  the  center,  the  home  and 
hope  of  civilization  in  all  ages  —  that  state  where  the 
unity  of  mankind  is  accomplished  in  the  spiritual  unities 
of  science,  art  and  love. 

To  sum  up  these  suggestions  which  I  have  thought  it 
desirable  to  offer  in  order  that  the  point  of  view  taken  in 
these  lectures  might,  perhaps,  be  plain,  I  conceive  of 
history  as  a  single  process  in  which  through  century 
after  century  in  race  after  race  the  soul  of  man  proceeds 
in  a  progressive  comprehension  of  the  universe  and  evo 
lution  of  its  own  humanity,  and  passes  on  to  each  new 
generation  its  accumulated  knowledge  and  developed 
energies,  in  their  totality  and  without  loss,  at  the  acme 
of  achievement.  I  conceive  of  this  inheriting  and  be 
queathing  power  as  having  its  life  and  action  in  the  race- 
mind.  I  conceive  of  literature  as  an  organ  of  the  race- 


24  THE   TORCH 

mind,  and  of  education  as  the  process  by  which  the  in 
dividual  enters  into  the  race-mind,  becomes  more  and 
more  man,  and  in  the  spiritual  life  mainly  by  means  of 
literature.  I  conceive  of  the  body  of  men  who  thus  live 
and  work  in  the  soul  as  constituting  the  intellectual 
state,  that  republic  of  letters,  in  which  the  race-mind 
reaches,  from  age  to  age,  its  maximum  of  knowledge 
and  power,  in  men  of  genius  and  those  whose  lives  they 
illumine,  move  and  direct;  the  unity  of  mankind  is  the 
ideal  end  of  this  state,  and  the  freeing  of  the  soul  which 
takes  place  in  it  is  its  means.  I  conceive  of  the  progres 
sive  life  of  this  state,  in  civilization  after  civilization,  as 
a  perpetual  death  of  the  best,  in  culture  after  culture, 
for  the  good  of  the  lower,  a  continuing  sacrifice,  in  the 
history  of  humanity,  of  man  for  mankind.  And  from 
this  mystery,  though  to  some  it  may  seem  only  the  re 
course  of  intellectual  despair,  I  pluck  a  confident  faith  in 
that  imperishable  relation  which  man  and  his  works 
contain,  and  which  though  known  only  in  the  continuity 
of  the  race-mind,  I  am  compelled  to  believe,  has  eternal 
reality. 


II 

THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD 

THE  language  of  literature  is  the  language  of  all  the 
world.  It  is  necessary  to  divest  ourselves  at  once  of  the 
notion  of  diversified  vocal  and  grammatical  speech  which 
constitutes  the  various  tongues  of  the  earth,  and 
conceals  the  identity  of  image  and  logic  in  the  minds  of 
all  men.  Words  are  intermediary  between  thought  and 
things.  We  express  ourselves  really  not  through  words, 
which  are  only  signs,  but  through  what  they  signify  — 
through  things.  Literature  is  the  expression  of  life. 
The  question,  then,  is  —  what  things  has  literature  found 
most  effectual  to  express  life,  and  has  therefore  habitu 
ally  preferred?  and  what  tradition  in  consequence  of  this 
habit  of  preference  has  been  built  up  in  all  literatures, 
and  obtained  currency  and  authority  in  this  province 
of  the  wider  realm  of  all  art?  It  is  an  interesting 
question,  and  fundamental  for  any  one  who  desires  to 
appreciate  literature  understandingly.  Perhaps  you  will 
permit  me  to  approach  it  somewhat  indirectly. 

You  are  all  familiar  with  something  that  is  called 
poetic  diction  —  that  is,  a  selected  language  specially 
fitted  for  the  uses  of  poetry;  and  you  are,  perhaps,  not 
quite  so  familiar  with  the  analogous  feature  in  prose, 
which  is  now  usually  termed  preciosity,  or  preciousness 
of  language,  that  is,  a  highly  refined  and  esthetic  diction, 
such  as  Walter  Pater  employs.  The  two  are  constant 
products  of  language  that  receives  any  literary  cultiva- 

25 


26  THE   TORCH 

tion,  and  they  are  sometimes  called  diseases  of  language. 
Thus,  in  both  early  and  late  Greek  there  sprang  up  lit 
erary  styles  of  expression,  involving  the  preference  of 
certain  words,  constructions  and  even  cadences,  and  the 
teaching  of  art  in  these  matters  was  the  business  of  the 
Greek  rhetorician;  so  in  Italy,  Spain,  and  France,  in  the 
Renaissance,  similar  styles,  each  departing  from  the 
common  and  habitual  speech  of  the  time,  grew  up,  and 
in  England  you  identify  this  mood  of  language  in  Eliza 
beth's  day  as  Euphuism.  The  phenomenon  is  common, 
and  belongs  to  the  nature  of  language.  Poetic  diction, 
however,  you  perhaps  associate  most  clearly  with  the 
mannerism  in  language  of  the  eighteenth  century  in 
England,  when  common  and  so-called  vulgar  words  were 
exiled  from  poetry,  and  Gray,  for  example,  could  not 
speak  of  the  Eton  schoolboys  as  playing  hoop,  but  only 
as  "chasing  the  rolling  circle's  speed,"  and  when,  to  use 
the  stock  example,  all  green  things  were  "verdant."  This 
is  fixed  in  our  memory  because  Wordsworth  has  the 
credit  of  leading  an  attack  on  the  poetic  diction  of  that 
period,  both  critically  in  his  prefaces  and  practically  in 
his  verse;  he  went  to  the  other  extreme,  and  introduced 
into  his  poetry  such  homely  words  as  "tub,"  for  ex 
ample;  he  held  that  the  proper  language  of  poetry  is  the 
language  of  common  life.  So  Emerson  in  his  addresses, 
you  remember,  had  recourse  to  the  humblest  objects  for 
illustration,  and  shocked  the  formalism  of  his  time  by 
speaking  of  "the  meal  in  the  firkin,  the  milk  in  the  pan." 
He  was  applying  in  prose  the  rule  of  Wordsworth  in 
poetry.  Walt  Whitman  represents  the  extreme  of  this 
use  of  the  actual  language  of  men.  But  if  you  consider 
the  matter,  you  will  see  that  this  choice  of  the  homely 
word  only  sets  up  at  last  a  fashion  of  homeliness  in  the 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   ALL   THE   WORLD        27 

place  of  a  fashion  of  refinement,  and  breeds,  for  instance, 
dialect  poets  in  shoals;  and  often  the  choice  is  really  not 
of  the  word,  but  of  the  homely  thing  itself  as  the  object 
of  thought  and  expressive  image  of  it;  and  in  men  so 
great  as  Emerson  and  Wordsworth  the  practice  is  a  proof 
of  that  sympathy  with  common  life  which  made  them  both 
great  democrats.  But  in  addition  to  the  diction  that 
characterizes  an  age,  you  must  have  observed  that  in 
every  original  writer  there  grows  up  a  particular  vocabu 
lary,  structure  and  rhythm  that  he  affects  and  that  in 
the  end  become  his  mannerism,  or  distinctive  style,  so 
marked  that  you  recognize  his  work  by  its  stamp  alone, 
as  in  Keats,  Browning,  and  Swinburne  in  poetry,  and  in 
Arnold  in  prose.  In  other  words  there  is  at  work  in  the 
language  of  a  man,  or  of  an  age  even,  a  constant  principle 
of  selection  which  tends  to  prefer  certain  ways  and  forms 
of  speech  to  others,  and  in  the  end  develops  a  language 
characteristic  of  the  age,  or  of  the  man. 

This  principle  of  selection,  whether  it  works  toward 
refinement  or  homeliness,  operates  in  the  same  way.  It 
must  be  remembered  —  and  it  is  too  often  forgotten  * — 
that  the  problem  of  any  artistic  work  is  a  problem  of 
economy.  How  to  get  into  the  two  hours'  traffic  of  the 
stage  the  significance  of  a  whole  life,  of  a  group  of  lives; 
how  to  pack  into  a  sixteen-line  lyric  a  dramatic  situation 
and  there  sphere  it  in  its  own  emotion;  how  to  rouse 
passion  and  pour  it  in  a  three-minute  poem,  like  Shel 
ley's  "Indian  Air"  —  all  these  are  problems  in  economy, 
by  which  speed,  condensation,  intensity  are  gained. 
Now  words  in  themselves  are  colorless,  except  so  far  as 
their  musical  quality  is  concerned;  but  the  thing  that  a 
word  stands  for  has  a  meaning  of  its  own  and  usually  a 
meaning  charged  with  associations,  and  often  this  asso- 


28  THE   TORCH 

dative  meaning  is  the  primary  and  important  one  in  its 
use.  A  rose,  for  example,  is  but  the  most  beautiful  of 
flowers  in  itself,  but  it  is  so  charged  with  association  in 
men's  lives,  and  still  more  heavily  charged  with  long  use 
of  emotion  in  literature,  that  the  very  word  and  mere 
name  of  it  awakes  the  heart  and  sets  a  thousand  mem 
ories  unconsciously  vibrating.  This  added  meaning  is 
what  I  am  accustomed  to  term  an  overtone  in  words; 
and  it  is  manifest  that,  in  view  of  the  necessity  for  econ 
omy  in  poetic  art,  those  words  which  are  the  richest  and 
deepest  in  overtone  will  be  preferred,  because  of  the  speed, 
certainty  and  fullness  they  contain.  The  question 
will  be  what  overtones  in  life  appeal  most  to  this  or  that 
poet;  he  will  reproduce  them  in  his  verse;  Pope  will  use 
the  overtones  of  a  polished  society,  Wordsworth  and 
Emerson  those  of  humble  life.  Now  our  larger  question 
is  what  overtones  are  characteristically  preferred  in  great 
literature,  in  what  objects  do  they  most  inhere,  and  in 
what  way  is  the  authoritative  tradition  of  literature,  as 
respects  its  means  of  expression,  thus  built  up? 

It  goes  without  saying  that  all  overtones  are  either  of 
thought  or  feeling.  What  modes  of  expression,  then, 
what  material  objects,  what  forms  of  imagination,  what 
abstract  principles  of  thought,  are  most  deeply  charged 
with  ideas  and  emotions?  It  will  be  agreed  that,  as  a 
mere  medium,  music  expresses  pure  emotion  most  directly 
and  richly;  music  seems  to  enter  the  physical  frame 
of  the  body  itself,  and  move  there  with  the  warmth  and 
instancy  of  blood.  The  sound  of  words,  therefore,  can 
not  be  neglected,  and  in  the  melody  and  echo  of  poetry 
sound  is  a  cardinal  element;  yet,  it  is  here  only  the 
veining  of  the  marble,  it  is  not  the  material  itself.  In 
the  objects  which  words  summon  up,  there  is  sometimes 


LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD      29 

an  emotional  power  as  direct  and  immediate  as  that  of 
music  itself,  as  for  example,  in  the  great  features  of  na 
ture,  the  mountains,  the  plains,  the  ocean,  which  awe 
even  the  savage  mind.  But,  in  general,  the  emotional 
power  of  material  objects  is  lent  to  them  by  association, 
that  is  by  the  human  use  that  has  been  made  of  them,  as 
on  the  plain  of  Marathon,  to  use  Dr.  Johnson's  old  illus 
tration,  it  is  the  thought  of  what  happened  there  that 
makes  the  spectator's  patriotism  "gain  force"  as  he 
surveys  the  scene.  This  human  use  of  the  world  is  the 
fountain  of  significance  in  all  imaginative  and  poetic 
speech;  and  in  the  broad  sense  history  is  the  story  of  this 
human  use  of  the  world. 

History  is  so  much  of  past  experience  as  abides  in 
race-memory;  and  underlies  race-literature  in  the  same 
way  that  a  poet's  own  experience  underlies  his  expres 
sion  of  life.  I  do  not  mean  that  when  a  poet  unlocks  his 
heart,  as  Shakespeare  did  in  his  sonnets,  he  necessarily 
writes  his  own  biography;  in  the  poems  he  writes  there 
may  be  much  of  actual  event  as  in  Burns's  love  songs,  or 
little  as  in  Dante's  "New  Life."  Much  of  a  poet's  experi 
ence  takes  place  in  imagination  only;  the  life  he  tells  is 
oftenest  the  life  that  he  strongly  desires  to  live,  and  the 
power,  the  purity  and  height  of  his  utterance  may  not 
seldom  be  the  greater  because  experience  here  uses  the 
voices  of  desire.  "All  I  could  never  be,"  in  Browning's 
plangent  line,  has  been  the  mounting  strain  of  the  sub- 
limest  and  the  tenderest  songs  of  men.  All  Ireland  could 
never  be,  thrills  and  sorrows  on  her  harp's  most  resonant 
string,  and  is  the  master-note  to  which  her  sweetest 
music  ever  returns.  All  man  could  never  be  makes  the 
sad  majesty  of  Virgil's  verse.  As  with  a  man,  what  a  na 
tion  strongly  desires  is  no  small  part  of  its  life,  and  is  the 


30  THE   TORCH 

mark  of  destiny  upon  it,  whether  for  failure  or  success; 
so  the  note  of  world-empire  is  heard  in  the  latest  English 
verse,  and  the  note  of  humanity  —  the  service  of  all  men 
—  has  always  been  dominant  in  our  own.  History, 
then,  must  be  thought  of,  in  its  relation  to  literature,  as 
including  the  desire  as  well  as  the  performance  of  the  race. 
History,  however,  in  the  narrowest  sense,  lies  close  to 
the  roots  of  imaginative  literature.  The  great  place  of 
history  and  its  inspirational  power  in  the  literature  of 
the  last  century  I  have  already  referred  to;  it  is  one  of 
the  most  important  elements  in  the  extraordinary  reach 
and  range  of  that  splendid  outburst  of  imagination 
throughout  Europe.  Aristotle  recognized  the  value  of 
history  as  an  aid  to  the  imagination,  at  the  very  moment 
that  he  elevated  poetry  above  history.  In  that  neces 
sary  economy  of  art,  of  which  I  spoke,  it  is  a  great  gain 
to  have  well-known  characters  and  familiar  events,  such 
as  Agamemnon  and  the  Trojan  War,  in  which  much 
is  already  done  for  the  spectator  before  the  play  begins. 
So  our  present  historical  novelists  have  their  stories  half- 
written  for  them  in  the  minds  of  their  readers,  and  es 
pecially  avail  themselves  of  an  emotional  element  there, 
a  patriotism,  which  they  do  not  have  to  create.  The  use 
of  history  to  the  imagination,  however,  goes  farther  than 
merely  to  spare  it  the  pains  of  creating  character  and  in 
cident  and  evoking  emotion.  It  assists  a  literary  move 
ment  to  begin  with  race-power  much  as  a  poet's  or  — 
as  in  Dickens's  case  —  a  novelist's  own  experience  aids 
him  to  develop  his  work,  however  much  that  experience 
may  be  finally  transformed  in  the  work.  Thus  the  novel 
of  the  last  age  really  started  its  great  career  from  Scott's 
historic  sense  working  out  into  imaginative  expression, 
and  in  a  lesser  degree  from  so  minor  a  writer  as  Miss 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD       31 

Edgeworth  in  whose  Irish  stories  —  which  were  con 
temporary  history  —  Scott  courteously  professed  to  find 
his  own  starting  point.  It  is  worth  noting,  also,  that 
the  Elizabethan  drama  had  the  same  course.  Shake 
speare  following  Marlowe's  example  developed  from  the 
historical  English  plays,  in  which  he  worked  in  Scott's 
manner,  into  his  full  control  of  imagination  in  the  purely 
ideal  sphere.  History  has  thus  often  been  the  hand 
maid  of  imagination,  and  the  foster-mother  of  great  lite 
rary  ages.  Yet  to  vary  Aristotle's  phrase  —  poetry  is  all 
history  could  never  be. 

It  appears  to  me,  nevertheless,  that  history  underlies 
race-literature  in  a  far  more  profound  and  universal  way. 
History  is  mortal:  it  dies.  Yet  it  does  not  altogether  die. 
Elements,  features,  fragments  of  it  survive,  and  enter 
into  the  eternal  memory  of  the  race,  and  are  there  trans 
formed,  and  —  as  we  say  —  spiritualized.  Literature  is 
the  abiding-place  of  this  transforming  power,  and  most 
profits  by  it.  And  to  come  to  the  heart  of  the  matter, 
there  have  been  at  least  three  such  cardinal  transforma 
tions  in  the  past. 

The  first  transformation  of  history  is  mythology.  I  do 
not  mean  to  enter  on  the  vexed  question  of  the  origin  of 
mythologies;  and,  of  course,  in  referring  to  history  as  its 
ground,  I  include  much  more  than  that  hero-worship 
such  as  you  will  find  elaborated  or  invented  in  Carlyle's 
essay  on  Odin,  and  especially  I  include  all  that  experi 
ence  of  nature  and  her  association  with  human  toil  and 
moods  that  you  will  find  delineated  with  such  marvelous 
subtleness  and  fullness  in  Walter  Pater's  essay  on 
Dionysus.  In  mythology,  mankind  preserved  from  his 
primitive  experience  of  nature,  and  his  own  heroic  past 
therein,  all  that  had  any  lasting  significance;  and,  al- 


32  THE   TORCH 

though  all  mythologies  have  specific  features  and  a  par 
ticular  value  of  their  own,  yet  the  race,  coming  to  its  best, 
as  I  have  said,  bore  here  its  perfect  blossom  in  Greek 
mythology.  I  know  not  by  what  grace  of  heaven,  by 
what  felicity  of  blend  in  climate,  blood  and  the  fortune 
of  mortal  life,  but  so  it  was  that  the  human  soul  put  forth 
the  bud  of  beauty  in  the  Greek  race;  and  there,  at  the 
dawn  of  our  own  intellectual  civilization  and  in  the  first 
sunrise  of  our  poetry  in  Homer,  was  found  a  world  filled 
with  divine  —  with  majestic  and  lovely  figures,  which 
had  absorbed  into  their  celestial  being  and  forms  the 
power  of  nature,  the  splendor  and  charm  of  the  material 
sphere,  the  fructifying  and  beneficent  operations  of  the 
external  universe,  the  providence  of  the  state  and  the 
inspiration  of  all  arts  and  crafts,  of  games  and  wars 
and  song;  each  of  these  deities  was  a  flashing  center  of 
human  energy,  aspiration,  reliance  —  with  a  realm  and 
servants  of  its  own;  and  mingling  with  them  in  fair 
companionship  was  a  company  of  demi-gods  and  heroes, 
of  kings  and  princes,  and  of  golden  youths,  significant  of 
the  fate  of  all  young  life  —  Adonis,  Hippolytus,  Orestes. 
This  mythologic  world  was  near  to  earth,  and  it  mixed 
with  legendary  history,  such  history  as  the  "Iliad"  con 
tained,  and  also  with  the  private  and  public  life  of  the 
citizens,  being  the  ceremonial  religion  of  the  state.  It 
was  all,  nevertheless,  the  transformation  that  man  had 
accomplished  of  his  own  past,  his  joys  and  sorrows,  his 
labors,  his  insights  and  desires,  the  deeds  of  his  ancestors 
—  the  human  use  that  he  made  of  the  world.  This  was 
the  body  of  idea  and  emotion  to  which  the  poet  appealed 
in  that  age,  precisely  as  our  historical  novelists  now  ap 
peal  to  our  own  knowledge  of  history  and  pre-estab 
lished  emotion  with  regard  to  it,  our  patriotism.  Here 


LANGUAGE   OF   ALL   THE   WORLD        33 

they  found  a  language  already  full  charged  with  emotion 
and  intelligence,  of  which  they  could  avail  themselves, 
and  speaking  which  they  spoke  with  the  voices  of  a 
thousand  years.  Nevertheless,  it  was  at  best  a  language 
like  others,  and  subject  to  change  and  decay  in  expres 
sive  power.  The  time  came  when,  the  creative  impulse 
in  mythology  having  ceased  and  its  forms  being  fixed, 
the  mythic  world  lay  behind  the  mind  of  the  advancing 
race  which  had  now  attained  conceptions  of  the  physical 
universe,  and  especially  ideas  of  the  moral  life,  which 
were  no  longer  capable  of  being  held  in  and  expressed 
by  the  mythic  world,  but  exceeded  the  bounds  of  ear 
lier  thought  and  feeling  and  broke  the  ancient  molds. 
Then  it  was  that  Plato  desired  to  exile  the  poets  and  their 
mythology  from  the  state.  He  could  not  be  content, 
either,  with  a  certain  change  that  had  occurred;  for  the 
creative  power  in  mythology  having  long  ceased,  as  I 
have  said,  the  imagination  put  forth  a  new  function  —  a 
meditative  power  —  and  brooding  over  the  old  fables  of 
the  world  of  the  gods  discovered  in  them,  not  a  record 
of  fact,  but  an  allegorical  meaning,  a  higher  truth  which 
the  fable  contained.  Mythology  passed  thus  into  an  em 
blematic  stage,  in  which  it  was  again  long  used  by  man 
kind,  as  a  language  of  universal  power.  Plato,  however, 
could  not  free  himself  from  the  mythologic  habit  of  im 
agination  so  planted  in  his  race,  and  found  the  most  ef 
fective  expression  for  his  ideas  in  the  myths  of  his  own 
invention  which  he  made  up  by  a  dexterous  and  poetic 
adaptation  of  the  old  elements;  and  others  later  than 
Plato  have  found  it  hard  to  disuse  the  mythologic  lan 
guage;  for,  although  the  old  religion  as  a  thing  of  faith 
and  practice  died  away,  it  survived  as  a  thing  of  form 
and  feature  in  art,  as  a  phase  of  natural  symbolism  and 


34  THE   TORCH 

of  inward  loveliness  of  action  and  passion  in  poetry,  as 
a  chapter  of  romance  in  the  history  of  the  race;  and  the 
modern  literatures  of  Europe  are,  hi  large  measure,  un 
intelligible  without  this  key. 

The  second  great  transformation  of  history  is  chivalry. 
Here  the  phenomenon  is  nearer  in  tune  and  lies  more 
within  the  field  of  observation  and  knowledge;  it  is  pos 
sible  to  trace  the  stages  of  the  growth  of  the  story  of  Ro 
land  with  some  detail  and  precision;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  Arthur  myth  reaches  far  back  into  the  be 
ginnings  of  Celtic  imagination,  and  all  such  race-myths 
tend  to  appropriate  and  embody  in  themselves  the  char 
acteristic  features  both  of  one  another  and  of  whatever  is 
held  to  be  precious  and  significant  in  history  or  even  in 
classical  and  Eastern  legend.  The  true  growth,  however, 
is  that  feudal  culture,  which  we  know  as  knighthood, 
working  out  its  own  ideal  of  action  and  character  and 
sentiment  on  a  basis  of  bravery,  courtesy,  and  piety, 
and  thereby  generating  patterns  of  knighthood,  typical 
careers,  and  in  the  end  an  imaginative  interpretation  of 
the  purest  spiritual  life  itself  in  the  various  legends  of 
the  Holy  Grail.  As  in  the  pagan  world  the  forms  and 
fables  of  mythology  and  their  interaction  downward  with 
the  human  world  furnished  the  imaginative  interpreta 
tion  of  life  as  it  then  was,  so  for  the  medieval  age,  the 
figures  and  tales  of  chivalry  and  their  interaction  upward 
with  the  spiritual  world  of  Christianity,  and  also  with 
the  magic  of  diabolism  round  about,  furnished  the  imagi 
native  interpretation  of  that  later  life.  It  was  this  new 
body  of  ideas  and  emotion  in  the  minds  of  men  that  the 
medieval  poets  appealed  to,  availed  themselves  of,  and 
so  spoke  a  language  of  imagery  and  passion  that  was  a 
world-language,  charged  as  I  have  said  with  the  thought 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD   35 

and  feeling,  the  tradition,  of  a  long  age.  What  happened 
to  the  language  of  mythology,  happened  also  to  this 
language;  it  lost  the  power  of  reality,  and  men  arose  who, 
being  in  advance  of  its  conceptions  of  life,  desired  to 
exile  it,  denounce  it  or  laugh  it  out  of  existence,  like 
Ascham  in  England,  and  Cervantes  in  Spain.  It  also 
suffered  that  late  change  into  an  allegorical  or  emble 
matic  meaning,  and  had  a  second  life  in  that  form  as  in 
the  notable  instance  of  Spenser's  "Faerie  Queene."  It 
also  could  not  die,  but  —  just  as  mythology  revived 
in  the  Alexandrian  poets  for  a  season,  and  fed  Theo 
critus  and  Virgil  —  chivalry  was  re-born  in  the  last  cen 
tury,  and  in  Tennyson's  Arthur,  and  in  Wagner's  "Par 
sifal"  lived  again  in  two  great  expressions  of  ideal  life. 

The  third  great  transformation  of  history  is  contained 
in  the  Scriptures.  The  Bible  is,  in  itself,  a  singularly 
complete  expression  of  the  whole  life  of  a  race  in  one 
volume  —  its  faith  and  history  blending  in  one  body  of 
poetry,  thought  and  imaginative  chronicle.  It  contains 
a  celestial  world  in  association  with  human  events;  its 
patriarchs  are  like  demi-gods,  and  it  has  heroes,  legends, 
tales  in  good  numbers,  and  much  romantic  and  passion 
ate  life,  on  the  human  side,  besides  its  great  stores  of 
spirituality.  In  literary  power  it  achieves  the  highest  in 
the  kinds  of  composition  that  is  uses.  It  is  as  a  whole, 
regarded  purely  from  the  human  point  of  view,  not  un 
fairly  to  be  compared  in  mass,  variety,  and  scope  of  ex 
pression,  with  mythology  and  chivalry  as  constituting  a 
third  great  form  of  imaginative  language;  nor  has  its  his 
tory  been  dissimilar  in  the  Christian  world  to  which  it 
came  with  something  of  that  same  remoteness  in  time  and 
reality  that  belonged  equally  to  mythology  and  chivalry. 
It  was  first  used  in  a  positive  manner,  as  a  thing  of  fact 


36  THE   TORCH 

and  solid  belief;  but  there  soon  grew  up,  you  remember, 
in  the  Christian  world  that  habit  of  finding  a  hidden 
meaning  in  its  historical  record,  of  turning  it  to  a  parable, 
of  extracting  from  it  an  allegorical  signification.  It  be 
came,  not  only  in  parts  but  as  a  whole,  emblematic,  and 
its  interpretation  as  such  was  the  labor  of  centuries. 
This  is  commonly  stated  as  the  source  of  that  universal 
mood  of  allegorizing  which  characterized  the  medieval 
world,  and  was  as  strongly  felt  in  secular  as  in  religious 
writers.  Its  historical  tales,  its  theories  of  the  universe, 
its  cruder  morals  in  the  Jewish  ages,  have  been  scoffed 
at,  just  as  was  the  case  with  the  Greek  myth,  from  the 
Apostate  to  Voltaire  and  later;  but  how  great  are  its 
powers  as  a  language  is  seen  in  the  completeness  with 
which  it  tyrannized  over  the  Puritan  life  in  England  and 
made  its  history,  its  ideas,  its  emotions  the  habitual  and 
almost  exclusive  speech  of  that  strong  Cromwellian  age. 
In  our  country  here  in  New  England  it  gave  the  mold 
of  imagination  to  our  ancestors  for  two  whole  centuries. 
A  book,  which  contains  such  power  that  it  can  make 
itself  the  language  of  life  through  so  many  centuries  and 
in  such  various  peoples  is  to  be  reckoned  as  one  of  the 
greatest  instruments  of  race-expression  that  man  pos 
sesses. 

Mythology,  chivalry,  the  Scriptures  are  the  tongues  of 
the  imagination.  It  is  far  more  important  to  know  them 
than  to  learn  French  or  German  or  Italian,  or  Latin  or 
Greek;  they  are  three  branches  of  that  universal  lan 
guage  which  though  vainly  sought  on  the  lips  of  men  is 
found  in  their  minds  and  hearts.  To  omit  these  in  edu 
cation  is  to  defraud  youth  of  its  inheritance;  it  is  like  de 
stroying  a  long-developed  organ  of  the  body,  like  putting 
out  the  eye  or  silencing  the  nerves  of  hearing.  Nor  is  it 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   ALL   THE   WORLD       37 

enough  to  look  them  up  in  encyclopedias  and  notes,  and 
so  obtain  a  piecemeal  information;  one  must  grow  fa 
miliar  with  these  forms  of  beauty,  forms  of  honor,  forms 
of  righteousness,  have  something  of  the  same  sense  of 
their  reality  as  that  felt  by  Homer  and  Virgil,  by  the 
singer  of  Roland  and  the  chronicler  of  the  "Mort 
d'Arthur,"  by  St.  Augustine,  and  St.  Thomas.  He  must 
form  his  imagination  upon  these  idealities,  and  load  his 
heart  with  them;  else  many  a  masterpiece  of  the  human 
spirit  will  be  lost  to  him,  and  most  of  the  rest  will  be  im 
paired.  If  one  must  know  vocabulary  and  grammar 
before  he  can  understand  the  speech  of  the  mouth,  much 
more  must  he  know  well  mythology,  chivalry  and  Bible- 
lore  before  he  can  take  possession  of  the  wisdom  that  the 
race-mind  has  spoken,  the  beauty  it  has  molded  life 
into,  as  a  thing  of  passion  and  action,  the  economy  of 
lucid  power  it  has  achieved  for  perfect  human  utterance, 
in  these  three  fundamental  forms  of  a  true  world-lan 
guage.  The  literature  of  the  last  century  is  permeated 
with  mythology,  chivalry  and  to  a  less  degree  with 
Scripture,  and  no  one  can  hope  to  assimilate  it,  to  re 
ceive  its  message,  unless  his  mind  is  drenched  with  these 
same  things;  and  the  further  back  his  tastes  and  desires 
lead  him  into  the  literature  of  earlier  times,  the  greater 
will  be  his  need  of  this  education  in  the  material,  the 
modes  and  the  forms  of  past  imagination. 

It  may  be  that  a  fourth  great  tongue  of  the  imagina 
tion  is  now  being  shaped  upon  the  living  of  men  in 
the  present  and  succeeding  ages.  If  it  be  so,  this  will  be 
the  work  of  the  democratic  idea,  which  is  now  still  at  the 
beginning  of  its  career ;  but  since  mythology  and  chivalry 
had  their  development  in  living  men,  it  is  natural  to 
suppose  that  the  human  force  is  still  operative  in  our 


38  THE  TORCH 

own  generation  as  it  once  was  in  those  of  Hellenic  and 
medieval  years.  The  characteristic  literature  of  de 
mocracy  is  that  of  its  ideas,  spiritualized  in  Shelley,  and 
that  of  the  common  lot  as  represented  in  the  sphere  of 
the  novel,  spiritualized  most  notably  in  Victor  Hugo.  In 
our  own  country  it  is  singular  to  observe  that  the  demo 
cratic  idea,  though  efficient  in  politics,  does  not  yet  es 
tablish  itself  in  imaginative  literature  with  any  great 
power  of  brilliancy,  does  not  create  great  democratic 
types,  or  in  any  way  express  itself  adequately.  This 
democratic  idea,  in  Dickens  for  example,  uses  the  ex 
perience  of  daily  life,  that  is,  contemporary  history,  or  at 
least  it  uses  an  artistic  arrangement  of  such  experience; 
but  the  novel  as  a  whole  has  given  us  in  regard  to  the 
common  lot,  rather  a  description  of  life  in  its  variety 
than  that  concentrated  and  essential  significance  of  life 
which  we  call  typical.  If  democracy  in  its  future  course 
should  evolve  such  a  typical  and  spiritualized  embodi 
ment  of  itself  as  chivalry  found  in  Arthur  and  the  Round 
Table,  or  as  the  heroic  age  of  Greece  found  in  Achilles 
and  the  Trojan  War,  or  as  the  genius  of  Rome  found 
in  Aeneas  and  his  fortunes,  then  imagination  —  race- 
imagination  will  be  enriched  by  this  fourth  great  instru 
ment;  but  this  is  to  cast  the  horoscope  of  too  distant  an 
hour.  I  introduce  the  thought  only  for  the  sake  of  in 
cluding  in  this  broad  survey  of  race-imagination  that 
experience  of  the  present  day,  that  history  in  the  con 
temporary  process  of  being  transformed,  out  of  which  the 
mass  of  the  books  of  the  day  is  now  made. 

Let  me  recur  now  to  that  principle  of  selection  which 
through  the  cumulative  action  of  repeated  preferences  of 
phrase  and  image  fixes  a  habit  of  choice  which  at  last 
stamps  the  diction  of  a  man,  a  school  or  an  age.  It  is 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   ALL   THE   WORLD        39 

plain  that  in  what  I  have  called  the  transformation  of 
history,  of  which  literature  is  the  express  image,  there  is 
the  same  principle  of  selection  which,  working  through 
long  periods  of  race-life,  results  at  last  in  those  idealities 
of  persons  and  events  in  which  inhere  most  powerfully 
those  overtones  of  beauty,  honor  and  righteousness  that 
the  race  has  found  most  precious  both  for  idea  and 
emotion;  and  to  these  are  to  be  added  what  I  have 
had  no  time  to  include  and  discuss,  the  idealities  of 
persons  and  events  found  outside  mythology,  chivalry 
and  Scripture,  in  the  work  of  individual  genius  like 
Shakespeare,  which  nevertheless  have  the  same  ground 
in  history,  in  experience,  that  in  them  is  similarly  trans 
formed.  Life-experience  spiritualized  is  the  formula  of 
all  great  literature;  it  may  range  from  the  experience  of 
a  single  life,  like  Sidney's  in  his  sonnets  to  that  of  an 
empire  in  VirgiPs  "Aeneid,"  or  of  a  religion  in  Dante's 
"Comedy."  In  either  case  the  formula  which  makes  it 
literature  is  the  same.  I  have  illustrated  the  point  by 
the  obvious  spiritualizations  of  history.  Race-life,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  literature,  results  at  last  in  these 
molds  of  imagination,  and  all  else  though  slowly,  yet 
surely,  drops  away  into  oblivion.  In  truth,  it  is  only  by 
being  thus  spiritualized  that  anything  human  survives 
from  the  past.  The  rose,  I  said,  has  been  so  dipped  in 
human  experience  that  it  is  less  a  thing  of  nature  than 
a  thing  of  passion.  In  the  same  way  Adonis,  Jason  and 
Achilles,  Roland  and  Arthur,  Lancelot,  Percival  and  Gala 
had,  Romeo  and  Hamlet  have  drawn  into  themselves 
such  myriads  of  human  lives  by  admiration  and  love 
that  from  them  everything  material,  contemporary  and 
mortal  has  been  refined  away,  and  they  seem  to  all  of 
us  like  figures  moving  in  an  immortal  air.  They  have 


40  THE   TORCH 

achieved  the  eternal  world.  To  do  this  is  the  work  of 
art.  It  may  seem  a  fantastic  idea,  but  I  will  venture  the 
saying  of  it,  since  to  me  it  is  the  truth.  Art,  I  sup 
pose,  you  think  of  as  the  realm  and  privilege  of  selected 
men,  of  sculptors,  painters,  musicians,  poets,  men  of 
genius  and  having  something  that  has  always  been  called 
divine  in  their  faculty;  but  it  appears  to  me  that  art, 
like  genius,  is  something  that  all  men  share,  that  it  is 
the  stamp  of  the  soul  in  every  one,  and  constitutes  their 
true  and  immaterial  life.  The  soul  of  the  race,  as  it  is 
seen  in  history  and  disclosed  by  history,  is  an  artist  soul; 
its  career  is  an  artistic  career;  its  unerring  selective 
power  expels  from  its  memory  every  mortal  element  and 
perserves  only  the  essential  spirit,  and  thereof  builds 
its  ideal  imaginative  world  through  which  it  finds  its 
true  expression;  its  more  perfect  comprehension  of  the 
world  is  science,  its  more  perfect  comprehension  of  its 
own  nature  is  love,  its  more  perfect  expression  of  its 
remembered  life  is  art.  Mankind  is  the  grandest  and 
surest  artist  of  all,  and  history  as  it  clarifies  is,  in  pure 
fact,  an  artistic  process,  a  creation  in  its  fullness  of  the 
beautiful  soul. 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  language  of  literature  in  the 
race  is  a  perfected  nature  and  a  perfected  manhood  and 
a  perfected  divinity,  so  far  as  the  race  at  the  moment  can 
see  toward  perfection.  The  life  which  literature  builds 
up  ideally  out  of  the  material  of  experience  is  not  wholly 
a  past  life,  but  there  mingles  with  it  and  at  last  con 
trols  it  the  life  that  man  desires  to  live.  Fullness  of 
life  —  that  fullness  of  action  which  is  poured  in  the 
epic,  that  fullness  of  passion  which  is  poured  in  the 
drama,  that  fullness  of  desire  that  is  poured  in  the  lyric 
: — the  life  of  which  man  knows  himself  capable  and 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD   41 

realizes  as  the  opportunity  and  hope  of  life  —  this  is  the 
life  that  literature  enthrones  in  its  dream.  You  have 
heard  much  of  the  will  to  believe  and  of  the  desire  to 
live:  literature  is  made  of  these  two,  warp  and  woof. 
Race  after  race  believes  in  the  gods  it  has  come  to  know 
and  in  the  heroes  it  has  borne,  and  in  what  it  wishes  to 
believe  of  divine  and  human  experience;  and  the  life  it 
thus  ascribes  to  its  gods  and  to  its  own  past  is  that  life 
it  most  ardently  desires  to  live.  Literature,  which 
records  this,  is  thus  the  chief  witness  to  the  nobility,  the 
constancy  and  instancy  of  man's  effort  for  perfection. 
What  wonder,  then,  if  in  his  sublimest  and  tenderest  song 
there  steals  that  note  of  melancholy  so  often  struck  by 
the  greatest  masters  in  the  crisis  and  climax  of  their 
works,  and  which,  when  so  struck,  has  more  of  the  infi 
nite  in  it,  more  of  the  human  in  it,  than  any  other  in  the 
slowly  triumphant  theme! 

To  sum  up  —  the  language  of  literature  is  experience; 
the  language  of  race-literature  is  race-experience,  or  his 
tory,  the  human  use  that  the  race  has  made  of  the  world. 
The  lav/  appears  to  be  that  history  in  this  sense  is  slowly 
transformed  by  a  refining  and  spiritualizing  process  into 
an  imaginative  world,  such  as  the  world  of  mythology, 
chivalry  or  the  Scriptures,  and  that  this  world  in  turn 
becomes  emblematic  and  fades  away  into  an  expression 
of  abstract  truth.  The  crude  beginning  of  the  process  is 
seen  in  our  historical  fiction;  the  height  of  it  in  Arthur 
or  in  Odin;  the  end  of  it  in  the  symbolic  or  allegoric  in 
terpretation  of  even  so  human  a  book  as  Virgil's 
"Aeneid."  Human  desire  for  the  best  enters  into  this 
process  with  such  force  that  the  record  of  the  past  slowly 
changes  into  the  prophecy  of  the  future,  and  out  of  the 
passing  away  of  what  was  is  built  the  dream  of  what 


42  THE   TORCH 

shall  be;  so  arises  in  race-life  the  creed  of  what  man 
wishes  to  believe  and  the  dream  of  the  life  he  desires  to 
live;  this  human  desire  for  belief  and  for  life  is,  in  the 
final  analysis,  the  principle  of  selection  whose  operation 
has  been  sketched,  and  on  its  validity  rests  the  validity 
and  truth  of  all  literature. 


Ill 

THE  TITAN  MYTH 
I 

I  PROPOSE  now  to  illustrate  by  the  specific  example 
of  the  Titan  Myth  how  it  is  that  Greek  mythology 
is  a  tongue  of  the  imagination  —  a  living  tongue  of  the 
universal  imagination  of  men. 

The  Titan  Myth  —  I  wonder  what  it  means  to  you? 
The  Titans  were  the  earliest  children  of  the  earth,  elder 
than  the  Greek  gods  even,  and  were  the  sons  of  the 
Earth,  their  mother.  You  perhaps  think  of  them  as 
mere  giants,  such  as  Jack  killed  —  medieval  monsters 
of  the  kin  of  Beauty  and  the  Beast.  Think  of  them 
rather  as  majestic  forms,  with  something  of  the  sweep 
and  mystery  of  those  figures  you  may  remember  out  of 
Ossian  and  his  misty  mountains,  with  the  largeness  and 
darkness  of  the  earth  in  them,  a  massive  dim-featured 
race,  but  with  an  earthly  rather  than  celestial  grandeur, 
embodiments  of  mighty  force  dull  to  beauty,  intelligence, 
light.  When  Zeus,  the  then  young  Olympian,  was  born, 
and  with  him  the  other  deities  of  the  then  new  divine 
world,  and  when  he  dethroned  his  father  and  put  the  new 
gods  in  possession  of  the  universe,  these  children  of  the 
old  regime,  misliking  change,  took  the  father's  part,  and 
warred  on  the  usurper  of  ancient  power,  and  were  over 
thrown  by  his  lightnings,  and  mountains  were  piled  on 
them;  and  now  you  may  read  in  Longfellow  of  Encela- 
dus,  the  type  and  image  of  their  fate,  buried  under 

43 


44  THE   TORCH 

Etna  whose  earthquakes  are  the  struggling  of  the  great 
Titan  beneath.  This  was  the  war  of  the  Titans  and  the 
gods.  One  of  the  Titans,  however,  stood  apart  from  the 
rest,  being  wiser  than  they.  Prometheus  made  friends 
with  Zeus,  but  his  fortune  was  not  less  grievous  to  him; 
for  when  he  saw  that  Zeus  took  no  account  of  men  —  "of 
miserable  men,"  —  but  yearned  to  destroy  them  from 
the  face  of  the  earth,  he  took  pity  on  mankind,  and  stole 
for  them  the  celestial  fire  and  gave  it  to  them,  for  until 
then  man  had  lived  a  life  of  mere  nature,  without  knowl 
edge,  or  any  arts,  not  even  that  of  agriculture.  Prome 
theus  was  the  fire-bringer ;  and,  bringing  fire,  he  brought 
to  men  all  the  uses  of  fire,  such  as  metal-working,  for 
example,  and  in  a  word  he  gave  to  mankind  its  entire 
career,  the  long  labor  of  progressive  civilization,  and 
the  life  of  the  spirit  itself  which  is  kindled,  as  we  say, 
from  the  Promethean  spark  within.  It  was  but  a  step 
for  the  Pagan  imagination,  at  a  later  stage,  to  think  of 
this  patron  of  mankind  as  the  creator  of  men,  since  he 
was  the  fosterer  of  their  lives;  it  was  said  that  he  had 
made  clay  images,  and  moistened  these  with  holy  water, 
so  that  they  became  living  creatures  —  men.  Zeus  was 
angered  by  this  befriending  of  the  human  race;  and  he 
flung  Prometheus  upon  a  mountain  of  the  Caucasus, 
chained  him  there,  and  planted  a  vulture  to  eat  always 
on  his  entrails;  and  in  the  imagination  of  men  there 
he  hangs  to  this  day.  Yet  there  was  one  condition  on 
which  he  might  be  released  and  again  received  into 
heaven.  He  alone  knew  the  secret  of  the  fall  of  Zeus  — 
the  means  by  which  it  would  be  brought  about;  and  if 
he  would  tell  this  secret,  so  that  Zeus  might  avoid  the 
danger  as  was  possible,  and  thereby  his  unjust  reign 
become  perpetual,  Prometheus  might  save  himself.  But 


THE   TITAN    MYTH  45 

the  Titan  so  loved  justice  that  he  kept  silence,  knowing 
that  in  the  course  of  ages  at  last  Zeus  would  fall.  This 
was  the  myth  of  Prometheus. 

Of  the  aspects  which  the  entire  legend  presents  in 
literature,  there  are  three  which  stand  out.  I  shall  ask 
you  to  consider  the  first  as  the  cosmic  idea  —  the  idea 
of  the  law  of  human  progress  that  it  contains.  To  the 
Greek  mind  the  development  of  the  universe  consisted 
in  the  supplanting  of  a  lower  by  a  higher  power,  under 
the  will  of  a  supreme  fate  or  necessity  which  was  above 
both  gods  and  men:  after  Uranus  was  Chronos,  after 
Chronos  was  Zeus,  after  Zeus  there  would  be  other  gods. 
The  Greeks  were  themselves  a  higher  power  in  their 
world,  and  as  such  had  conquered  the  Persians;  theirs 
was  the  victory  of  light  over  darkness,  of  civilization 
over  barbarism,  and  therefore  on  the  walls  of  their  great 
temple,  the  Parthenon,  which  was  the  embodiment  of 
their  spiritual  consciousness  as  a  race,  they  depicted 
three  great  mythic  events  symbolizing  the  victory  of  the 
higher  power  —  that  is,  the  war  of  the  Centaurs  and 
the  Lapithse,  of  the  Athenians  and  the  Amazons,  and 
of  the  gods  and  the  Titans.  This  cosmic  idea  —  the 
Greek  conception  of  progress  —  it  is  more  convenient 
to  delay  to  the  next  lecture.  Secondly,  I  shall  ask  you 
to  consider  the  conception  of  the  friend  of  man  suffering 
for  his  sake  —  one  that  without  irreverence  may  be  desig 
nated  as  the  Christ-idea.  This  phase  of  the  myth  natu 
rally  has  received  less  development  in  literature,  inas 
much  as  the  ideas  and  emotions  it  embodies  find  expres 
sion  inevitably  and  almost  exclusively  in  the  symbol  of 
the  Cross  and  the  life  that  led  up  thereto.  But  for 
those  who,  in  the  chances  of  time  have  stood  apart  from 
the  established  faith  of  Christendom,  and  have  not  sel- 


46  THE   TORCH 

dom  encountered  the  creed  and  practice  of  their  age  in 
persecution,  being  victims  for  the  sake  of  reason  —  for 
these  men,  the  figure  of  Prometheus  has  been  in  the 
place  of  the  Cross,  an  image  of  themselves,  their  proto 
type.  The  expression  of  this  particular  idea,  however, 
has  been  slight  in  literature;  but  it  naturally  appears 
there,  and  Prometheus  has  come  to  be  the  characteristic 
symbol  of  the  peculiar  suffering  of  genius;  so  Longfellow 
uses  it  in  his  "Prometheus." 

"All  is  but  a  symbol  painted 

Of  the  Poet,  Prophet,  Seer; 
Only  those  are  crowned  and  sainted 
Who  with  grief  have  been  acquainted, 
Making  nations  nobler,  freer." 

Under  this  aspect  Prometheus  is  the  martyr  of  humanity. 
Thirdly,  I  shall  ask  you  to  consider  the  conception  of 
Prometheus,  not  as  an  individual,  but  as  identified  with 
mankind,  as  mankind  itself  suffering  in  all  its  race-life 
and  throughout  its  history,  wretched,  tyrannized  over 
by  some  dark  and  unjust  necessity,  yet  unterrified,  reso 
lute,  invincible  in  its  faith  in  that 

"One  far-off  divine  event 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves." 

The  imagination,  age  after  age,  finds  in  Prometheus  such 
a  symbol  of  man's  race-life.  This  is  to  conceive  of  Pro 
metheus  as  the  idea  of  humanity. 

^Eschylus  fixed  the  form  of  the  Titan  for  the  imagina 
tion  and  surrounded  it  with  the  characteristic  scene. 
He  nailed  Prometheus  in  chains  riveted  into  the  rock, 
the  vast  desolate  cliffs  of  the  Caucasus,  an  indistinct  and 
mighty  figure,  frosted  with  the  night  and  watching  the 
stars  in  their  courses  with  lidless  eyes,  the  dark  vulture 


THE   TITAN    MYTH  47 

hovering  in  his  bosom.  Perhaps  I  can  make  the  scene 
more  real  to  you  by  a  passage  from  a  letter  of  a  friend 
who  last  spring  was  in  that  solitude.  "All  the  fore 
noon,"  he  says,  "I  have  been  traveling  forward  beneath 
the  giant  wall  of  the  frosty  Caucasus.  The  snow-clad 
plain  serves  as  a  dazzling  foreground  to  the  towering 
rugged  peaks  so  sharply  denned  in  steel  white  and  dull 
black  wherever  the  snow  leaves  the  beetling  rock  bare. 
The  gorges  and  ravines  which  are  here  and  there  visible 
look  like  old-time  scars  of  jagged  wounds  on  the  sullen 
face  of  the  mountains.  The  dreary  solitude  of  the  scene 
is  very  impressive.  Far  off  yonder  in  the  distance  I 
can  picture  the  chill  and  desolate  vulture-peak  where 
Prometheus,  in  his  galling  chains,  longed  for  the  day  to 
give  peace  to  'starry-kirtled  night'  (if  I  remember  my 
^Eschylus  rightly)  and  yearned  for  the  sun  to  arise  and 
dispel  the  hoar-frost  of  dawn.  It  all  comes  up  again 
before  my  mind  in  this  far-away  solitary  region." 
Thither  to  this  scene,  that  my  friend  describes,  came 
with  comfort  or  counsel  the  daughters  of  the  Ocean,  and 
old  Oceanus  himself,  the  Titan's  brother,  and  lo  on  her 
wanderings,  and  Hermes,  the  messenger  of  Zeus,  to  make 
terms  with  Prometheus,  or  inflict  new  tortures  should  he 
refuse.  But  Prometheus  remained  the  resolute  and  faith 
ful  sufferer;  there  stretched  on  the  rock  he  would  await 
the  sure  coming  of  that  justice  which  is  above  even  the 
heavens  of  Zeus  and  contains  and  orders  even  them.  It 
is  a  sublime  moral  situation.  Who  could  ever  forget 
that  figure,  once  stamped  on  his  imagination,  though  but 
a  schoolboy?  So  Byron  remembered  his  Harrow  days: 
"Of  the  'Prometheus'  of  ^Eschylus,"  he  says,  "I  was 
passionately  fond  as  a  boy.  It  was  one  of  the  Greek 
dramas  we  used  to  read  three  times  a  year  at  Harrow. 


48  THE   TORCH 

Indeed,  it  and  the  'Medea'  were  the  only  ones,  except 
the  'Seven  Against  Thebes,'  which  pleased  me.  The 
Trometheus,'  if  not  exactly  in  my  plan  has  always  been 
so  much  in  my  head  that  I  well  understand  how  its 
influences  have  passed  into  all  I  have  done."  It  goes 
with  this  acknowledgment,  and  bespeaks  the  critic's  acute 
penetration,  to  find  Jeffrey  affirming  that  there  is  no 
work  of  modern  literature  that  more  than  Byron's 
"Manfred"  approaches  the  "Prometheus"  of  ^Eschylus. 
Byron  only  illustrates  the  fascination  that  this  myth 
has  for  the  race;  the  world  will  never  let  go  of  this 
symbol  of  itself. 

The  moment  and  the  cause,  the  invincible  resolution 
denying  the  will  of  the  apparent  gods  of  the  hour  in 
obedience  to  the  higher  light  within,  are  the  same  that 
have  nailed  all  martyrs  to  the  cross,  sent  patriots  to  rot 
in  prisons,  and  borne  on  the  leaders  of  all  forlorn 
hopes  in  their  death-charges,  and  of  these  the  history 
of  the  last  century  gives  many  a  modern  instance.  In 
our  own  time  Siberia  has  been  one  vast  Caucasus;  I  re 
member  when  not  long  ago  its  name  was  Crete;  and  now 
it  is  Macedonia  —  they  are  all  tracts  of  that  desolation 
that  swallows  up  in  its  voiceless  solitude  and  buries  from 
the  ears  of  God  and  man  the  human  cry.  In  the  mind 
and  memory  of  the  race  there  are  two  great  mountains; 
over  against  Sinai  towers  the  peak  of  the  Caucasus  with 
perpetual  challenge;  yet  they  are  twin  peaks  —  one, 
the  mount  of  faith  in  God,  the  other,  the  mount  of  faith 
in  man.  You  know  how  the  race,  from  time  to  time, 
as  great  moods  sweep  over  it  —  the  mood  of  asceticism, 
or  of  Christian  chivalry,  or  of  world  conquest,  sets  up 
some  historic  figure  as  the  type  and  expression  of  this 
mood  —  some  St.  Francis,  or  Philip  Sidney,  or  Napoleon; 


THE   TITAN   MYTH  49 

this  is  because  the  race  sees  in  these  men  a  greater  image 
of  itself  in  those  particular  moods.  So,  in  a  more  ab 
stract  way  the  race  takes  some  part  of  its  self-conscious 
ness  —  say,  its  perception  of  what  is  evil  in  its  own  heart 
—  and  puts  it  outside  of  itself  so  as  to  see  it  better, 
projects  or  objectifies  itself,  as  we  say,  in  an  image,  like 
Mephistopheles;  it  sees  in  Mephistopheles  itself  in  a 
certain  mood  —  a  mood  of  mocking  denial  of  all  good. 
So,  in  its  own  history  and  memory  the  race  perceives 
that  often  its  greatest  men,  those  who  have  been  its 
civilizers,  have  been  victims  of  the  powers  of  their 
day,  and  have  served  the  race  and  carried  on  its  life 
by  fidelity  to  their  own  hearts  and  the  truth  in  them  in 
spite  of  the  utmost  suffering  that  could  be  inflicted  on 
them.  The  race  thinks  of  these  men  as  constituting  its 
ov/n  life,  gathers  and  blends  them  in  one  being  and  finds 
that  being  —  the  type  that  stands  for  its  continuous 
life  —  in  Prometheus.  In  him  the  race  projects  —  as 
I  have  said  —  or  objectifies  itself  in  the  mood  of  suffer 
ing  the  worst  for  the  good  of  men,  with  undismayed 
courage  and  unbroken  will.  Prometheus  is  man  as  he 
knows  himself  in  history,  the  immortal  sufferer  under 
injustice  bringing  even  by  his  sorrows  the  higher  justice 
that  shall  at  last  prevail  —  he  is  this  figure  set  clear  and 
separate  before  the  mind:  he  is  the  idea  of  humanity, 
conceived  in  the  characteristic  act  of  its  noblest  life — • 
he  is  mankind. 

I  dwelt  in  the  last  lecture  on  the  treasure  that  the  race- 
imagination  possesses  in  the  Greek  myths,  as  a  means 
of  expression;  in  the  whole  inheritance  of  our  literature 
there  is  nothing  that  the  poet  finds  so  great  a  gift  as 
these  forms  and  tales  of  the  mythic  world  in  which  the 
work  of  creation  is  already  half  done  for  him,  and  the 


50  THE   TORCH 

storing  of  ideas  and  emotions  has  been  accomplished, 
so  that  with  a  word  he  can  release  in  the  mind  the  flood 
of  meaning  they  contain,  as  if  he  pushed  an  electric 
button;  they  are  to  him  what  the  common  law  is  to  a 
lawyer  —  the  stored  results  of  the  past,  in  experience 
and  principle;  he  has  only  to  adopt  them  into  his  human 
verse,  as  he  adopts  into  his  verse  of  nature  the  Andes 
and  Ararat.  It  was  not  surprising  that  such  a  tale  as 
the  Titan  Myth  should  be  among  the  chief  memories  of 
the  race,  never  wholly  forgotten;  yet  it  waited  for  its 
moment.  After  the  first  mention  of  it  in  literature  three 
thousand  years  went  by,  before  the  moment  came.  Then 
the  French  Revolution  struck  its  hour.  It  is  true  that 
the  myth  stirred  in  the  Renaissance  when  all  things 
Greek  revived,  and  Calderon,  the  great  Spanish  poet, 
treated  some  minor  aspects  of  it;  but,  in  and  about  the 
Revolution,  it  was  handled  repeatedly  by  great  poets 
who  strove  to  recast  the  story  and  use  it  to  express  the 
ideas  and  emotions  of  their  own  age.  Goethe  in  his 
youth,  and  the  Germans  —  Herder  and  Schlegel,  each 
wrote  a  Prometheus;  in  Italy  Monti  took  the  subject;  in 
England  Landor  and  Byron  touched  it  lightly,  and  Keats 
and  Shelley  made  it  the  matter  of  great  poems;  and  later, 
in  France,  where  Voltaire  had  approached  it,  Victor 
Hugo  and  Edgar  Quinet  elaborated  it;  nor  do  these 
names  exhaust  the  list  of  those  who  in  the  last  century 
made  it  a  principal  theme  of  verse.  This  re-birth  was 
a  natural  one;  for  the  French  Revolution,  which  you 
remember  Wendell  Phillips  in  his  great  Harvard  speech 
described  as  "the  most  unmixed  blessing  that  ever  befell 
mankind"  —  the  French  Revolution  was  rooted  in  the 
idea  of  humanity  and  was  the  cause  of  humanity.  More 
over,  the  Revolution  has  a  Titanic  quality  in  itself;  there 


THE   TITAN   MYTH  51 

is  the  feeling  of  large  earth-might  in  the  struggle  of  the 
heavy  masses  of  the  darkened  people,  peasant-born;  and 
in  their  revolt  against  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  whose 
serfs  they  were,  there  was  the  sense  of  a  strife  with  the 
careless  luxury  of  the  unjust  gods;  there  was  in  the 
wretchedness  of  the  European  peoples  the  state  of  man 
that  Prometheus  pitied  when  he  rebuked  Zeus  for  tak 
ing  no  account  of  men  —  "of  miserable  men";  and  in 
the  tumult  and  ardor  and  invincible  faith  of  the  Revo 
lution  there  was  both  the  Titanic  atmosphere  and  the 
Promethean  spirit.  Shelley  was  the  poet  through  whom  v 
the  literary  expression  of  the  Revolution  was  to  be 
poured.  It  is  necessary  to  mark  the  time  precisely. 
The  Revolution  had  flamed,  and  in  Napoleon,  whom  more 
than  one  poet  celebrated  as  the  Prometheus  of  the  age, 
had  apparently  flamed  out.  The  Revolution,  as  a  politi 
cal  idea  seemed  to  have  failed,  and  Europe  sank  back 
into  the  arms  of  king  and  priest.  It  was  then  that  these 
great  Englishmen,  Byron  and  Shelley,  in  their  youth 
took  up  the  fallen  cause  and  bore  it  onward  in  their 
hands  till  Byron  died  for  it  in  the  war  of  Greek  Inde 
pendence  and  Shelley,  having  sung  his  song,  sank  in  the 
waters  of  the  Mediterranean  Sea. 

Shelley  came  to  this  subject  naturally  and  through 
years  of  unconscious  preparation;  and  when  the  moment 
of  creation  came,  he  felt  the  Titanic  quality,  that  I 
spoke  of,  in  the  Revolution,  felt  the  Promethean  secur 
ity  of  victory  it  contained  —  felt,  too,  the  Promethean 
suffering  which  was  the  heart  of  mankind  as  he  saw  it 
surveying  Europe  in  his  day,  and  knew  it  in  his  own 
bosom  as  well.  He  conceived  of  Prometheus  as  man 
kind,  of  his  history  and  fate  as  the  destiny  of  man;  and 
being  full  of  that  far  sight  of  Prometheus  which  saw 


52  THE   TORCH 

the  victorious  end  —  being  as  full  of  it  as  the  wheel  of 
Ezekiel  was  full  of  eyes  —  he  saw,  as  the  center  of  all 
vision,  Prometheus  Unbound  —  the  millennium  of  man 
kind.  He  imagined  the  process  of  that  great  liberation 
and  its  crowning  prosperities.  This  is  his  poem.  In 
this  poem  the  Revolution  as  a  moral  idea  reached  its 
height;  that  is  what  makes  it,  from  the  social  point  of 
view,  the  race-point  of  view,  the  greatest  work  of  the 
last  century  in  creative  imagination  —  for  it  is  the  sum 
mary  and  center,  in  the  world  of  art,  of  the  greatest 
power  in  that  century  —  the  power  of  the  idea  of  human 
ity.  I  shall  present  only  the  cardinal  phases  of  the 
dramatic  situation,  hi  the  poem,  and  of  the  moral  idea 
by  which  it  is  solved. 

The  poem  opens  in  the  Caucasus,  with  Prometheus 
bound  to  the  rock,  an  indistinct  figure  such  as  I  have 
described  him;  his  form  is  left  undefined  —  he  is  a  voice 
in  the  vast  solitudes;  and  his  first  speech,  which  dis 
closes  the  situation,  makes  you  aware  of  physical  suffer 
ing,  mental  anguish,  an  undismayed  and  patient  will,  an 
unconquerable  faith  —  these  are  the  qualities  which 
make  him  an  elemental  being  and  characterize  him  at 
once.  It  is  an  ^Sschylean  speech,  phrases  from  ^Eschylus 
are  welded  into  it;  but  the  moral  grandeur  of  Prometheus 
—  all,  that  is,  except  the  historical  and  physical  features 
of  the  scene  —  bears  the  creative  mark  of  Shelley's  own 
sublimity  of  conception. 

"Monarch  of  Gods  and  Daemons,  and  all  Spirits 
But  One,  who  throng  those  bright  and  rolling  worlds 
Which  Thou  and  I  alone  of  living  things 
Behold  with  sleepless  eyes!  regard  this  Earth 
Made  multitudinous  with  thy  slaves,  whom  thou 
Requitest  for  knee-worship,  prayer,  and  praise, 


THE   TITAN   MYTH  53 

And  toil,  and  hecatombs  of  broken  hearts, 
With  fear  and  self-contempt  and  barren  hope; 
Whilst  me,  who  am  thy  foe,  eyeless  in  hate, 
Hast  thou  made  reign  and  triumph,  to  thy  scorn 
O'er  mine  own  misery  and  thy  vain  revenge. 
Three  thousand  years  of  sleep-unsheltered  hours, 
And  moments  aye  divided  by  keen  pangs 
Till  they  seemed  years,  torture  and  solitude, 
Scorn  and  despair  —  these  are  mine  empire: 
More  glorious  far  than  that  which  thou  surveyest 
From  thine  unenvied  throne,  O,  Mighty  God! 
Almighty,  had  I  deigned  to  share  the  shame 
Of  thine  ill  tyranny,  and  hung  not  here 
Nailed  to  this  wall  of  eagle-baffling  mountain, 
Black,  wintry,  dead,  unmeasured ;  without  herb, 
Insect,  or  beast,  or  shape  or  sound  of  life. 
Ah  me!  alas,  pain,  pain  ever,  for  ever! 

"No  change,  no  pause,  no  hope!  Yet  I  endure. 
I  ask  the  Earth,  have  not  the  mountains  felt? 
I  ask  yon  Heaven,  the  all-beholding  Sun, 
Has  it  not  seen?  The  Sea,  in  storm  or  calm, 
Heaven's  ever-changing  Shadow,  spread  below, 
Have  its  deaf  waves  not  heard  my  agony? 
Ah  me!  alas,  pain,  pain  ever,  for  ever! 

"The  crawling  glaciers  pierce  me  with  the  spears 
Of  their  moon-freezing  crystals,  the  bright  chains 
Eat  with  their  burning  cold  into  my  bones. 
Heaven's  winged  hound,  polluting  from  thy  lips 
His  beak  in  poison  not  his  own,  tears  up 
My  heart;  and  shapeless  sights  come  wandering  by, 
The  ghastly  people  of  the  realm  of  dream, 
Mocking  me:  and  the  Earthquake-fiends  are  charged 
To  wrench  the  rivets  from  my  quivering  wounds 
When  the  rocks  split  and  close  again  behind: 
While  from  their  loud  abysses  howling  throng 
The  genii  of  the  storm,  urging  the  rage 
Of  whirlwind,  and  afflict  me  with  keen  hail. 


54  THE   TORCH 

"And  yet  to  me  welcome  is  day  and  night, 
Whether  one  breaks  the  hoar  frost  of  the  morn, 
Or  starry,  dim,  and  slow,  the  other  climbs 
The  leaden-colored  east;  for  then  they  lead 
The  wingless,  crawling  hours,  one  among  whom 
—  As  some  dark  Priest  hales  the  reluctant  victim  — 
Shall  drag  thee,  cruel  King,  to  kiss  the  blood 
From  these  pale  feet,  which  then  might  trample  thee 
If  they  disdained  not  such  a  prostrate  slave. 
Disdain !  Ah  no !  I  pity  thee.    What  ruin 
Will  hunt  thee  undefended  through  the  wide  Heaven! 
How  will  thy  soul,  cloven  to  its  depth  with  terror, 
Gape  like  a  hell  within!  I  speak  in  grief 
Not  exultation,  for  I  hate  no  more, 
As  then  ere  misery  made  me  wise.    The  curse 
Once  breathed  on  thee  I  would  recall.    Ye  Mountains, 
Whose  many-voiced  Echoes,  through  the  mist 
Of  cataracts,  flung  the  thunder  of  that  spell! 
Ye  icy  Springs,  stagnant  with  wrinkling  frost, 
Which  vibrated  to  hear  me,  and  then  crept 
Shuddering  through  India!     Thou  serenest  Air, 
Through  which  the  Sun  walks  burning  without  beams! 
And  ye  swift  Whirlwinds,  who  on  poised  wings 
Hung  mute  and  moveless  o'er  yon  hushed  abyss, 
As  thunder,  louder  than  your  own,  made  rock 
The  orbed  world!     If  then  my  words  had  power, 
Though  I  am  changed  so  that  aught  evil  wish 
Is  dead  within;  although  no  memory  be 
Of  what  is  hate,  let  them  not  lose  it  now! 
What  was  that  curse?  for  ye  all  heard  me  speak." 

Prometheus's  character,  you  observe,  is  developed  in 
the  point  that  he  no  longer  hates  Zeus,  but  is  filled  with 
pity  for  him.  Later  in  the  scene  the  Furies  enter,  to  tor 
ture  the  Titan  with  new  torments.  What  torments  will 
be  the  most  piercing  to  the  suffering  spirit  of  man  —  the 
spirit  that  suffers  in  advancing  human  welfare?  Will 
it  not  be  the  fact  that  the  gifts  he  has  given  man  have 


THE    TITAN    MYTH  55 

proved  evil  gifts,  and  that  in  the  effort  for  perfection 
man  has  but  the  more  heaped  on  himself  damnation? 
The  thought  is  found  in  many  treatments  of  the  myth: 
Themis  warned  Prometheus  that  in  aiding  man  with 
fire  and  the  arts  he  only  increased  man's  woes.  It  is  the 
old  pessimistic  thought  that  civilization  is  a  curse  — 
that  the  only  growth  of  the  soul  is  growth  in  the  capacity 
for  pain,  for  disillusion,  for  despair.  Shelley  introduces 
it  in  quite  the  Promethean  spirit  —  as  a  thing,  which  if 
it  be,  is  to  be  borne.  What  were  the  two  characteristic 
failures  of  human  hope  in  Shelley's  eyes?  The  capital 
instances?  They  were  the  failure  of  Christianity  to 
bring  the  millennium,  and  the  failure  of  the  French  Revo 
lution  in  the  same  end  —  and  not  only  their  failure  to 
bring  the  millennium,  but,  on  the  contrary,  their  in 
fluence  in  still  further  confounding  the  state  of  mankind 
and  flooding  the  nations  with  new  miseries.  The  Furies 
show  these  two  failures  to  Prometheus  in  vision.  The 
passage  is  somewhat  involved  as  the  vision  is  successive 
ly  disclosed  through  the  words  of  the  chorus  of  Furies, 
of  the  attendant  sisters  lone  and  Panthea,  and  of  Pro 
metheus,  but  I  will  endeavor  to  make  it  plain: 

"CHORUS 

"The  pale  stars  of  the  morn 
Shine  on  a  misery,  dire  to  be  borne. 
Dost  thou  faint,  mighty  Titan?     We  laugh  thee  to  scorn. 
Dost  thou  boast  the  clear  knowledge  thou  waken'dst  for  man? 
Then  was  kindled  within  him  a  thirst  which  outran 
Those  perishing  waters;  a  thirst  of  fierce  fever, 
Hope,  love,  doubt,  desire,  which  consume  him  for  ever. 
One  came  forth  of  gentle  worth 
Smiling  on  the  sanguine  earth; 
His  words  outlived  him,  like  swift  poison 
Withering  up  truth,  peace,  and  pity. 


56  THE   TORCH 

Look!  where  round  the  wide  horizon 
Many  a  million-peopled  city 
Vomits  smoke  in  the  bright  air. 
Mark  that  outcry  of  despair! 
'T  is  his  mild  and  gentle  ghost 
Wailing  for  the  faith  he  kindled: 
Look  again,  the  flames  almost 
To  a  glow-worm's  lamp  have  dwindled: 
The  survivors  round  the  embers 
Gather  in  dread. 

Joy,  joy,  joy! 

Past  ages  crowd  on  thee,  but  each  one  remembers, 
And  the  future  is  dark,  and  the  present  is  spread 
Like  a  pillow  of  thorns  for  thy  slumberless  head. 

"SEMICHORUS  I 
"Drops  of  bloody  agony  flow 
From  his  white  and  quivering  brow. 
Grant  a  little  respite  now: 
See  a  disenchanted  nation 
Springs  like  day  from  desolation; 
To  Truth  its  state  is  dedicate, 
And  Freedom  leads  it  forth,  her  mate; 
A  legioned  band  of  linked  brothers 
Whom  Love  calls  children  — 

"SEMICHORUS  II 

"  'T  is  another's: 
See  how  kindred  murder  kin: 
'T  is  the  vintage  time  for  death  and  sin: 
Blood,  like  new  wine,  bubbles  within: 
Till  Despair  smothers 
The  struggling  world,  which  slaves  and  tyrants  win. 

[ALL  THE  FURIES  VANISH,  EXCEPT  ONE] 

IONE.    Hark,  sister!  what  a  low  yet  dreadful  groan 
Quite  unsuppressed  is  tearing  up  the  heart 
Of  the  good  Titan,  as  storms  tear  the  deep, 
And  beasts  hear  the  sea  moan  in  inland  caves. 


THE    TITAN    MYTH  57 

Darest  them  observe  how  the  fiends  torture  him? 

PANTHEA.    Alas!  I  looked  forth  twice,  but  will  no  more. 

IONE.    What  didst  thou  see? 

PANTHEA.    A  woful  sight:  a  youth 

With  patient  looks  nailed  to  a  crucifix. 

IONE.    What  next? 

PANTHEA.    The  heaven  around,  the  earth  below 

Was  peopled  with  thick  shapes  of  human  death, 

All  horrible,  and  wrought  by  human  hands, 

And  some  appeared  the  work  of  human  hearts, 

For  men  were  slowly  killed  by  frowns  and  smiles: 

And  other  sights  too  foul  to  speak  and  live 

Were  wandering  by.    Let  us  not  tempt  worse  fear 

By  looking  forth:  those  groans  are  grief  enough. 

FURY.    Behold  an  emblem:  those  who  do  endure 

Deep  wrongs  for  man,  and  scorn,  and  chains,  but  heap 

Thousandfold  torment  on  themselves  and  him. 

PROMETHEUS.     Remit  the  anguish  of  that  lighted  stare; 

Close  those  wan  lips ;  let  that  thorn- wounded  brow 

Stream  not  with  blood;  it  mingles  with  thy  tears! 

Fix,  fix  those  tortured  orbs  in  peace  and  death, 

So  thy  sick  throes  shake  not  that  crucifix, 

So  those  pale  fingers  play  not  with  thy  gore. 

O,  horrible!     Thy  name  I  will  not  speak, 

It  hath  become  a  curse.    I  see,  I  see 

The  wise,  the  mild,  the  lofty,  and  the  just, 

Whom  thy  slaves  hate  for  being  like  to  thee, 

Some  hunted  by  foul  lies  from  their  heart's  home, 

An  early-chosen,  late-lamented  home; 

As  hooded  ounces  cling  to  the  driven  hind ; 

Some  linked  to  corpses  in  unwholesome  cells: 

Some  —  Hear  I  not  the  multitude  laugh  loud?  — 

Impaled  in  lingering  fire:  and  mighty  realms 

Float  by  my  feet,  like  sea-uprooted  isles, 

Whose  sons  are  kneaded  down  in  common  blood 

By  the  red  light  of  their  own  burning  homes. 

FURY.    Blood  thou  canst  see,  and  fire ;  and  canst  hear  groans ; 

Worse  things,  unheard,  unseen,  remain  behind. 

PROMETHEUS.    Worse? 


58  THE   TORCH 

FURY.    In  each  human  heart  terror  survives 

The  ruin  it  has  gorged:  the  loftiest  fear 

All  that  they  would  disdain  to  think  were  true: 

Hypocrisy  and  custom  make  their  minds 

The  fanes  of  many  a  worship,  now  outworn. 

They  dare  not  devise  good  for  man's  estate, 

And  yet  they  know  not  that  they  do  not  dare. 

The  good  want  power,  but  to  weep  barren  tears. 

The  powerful  goodness  want:  worse  need  for  them. 

The  wise  want  love ;  and  those  who  love  want  wisdom ; 

And  all  best  things  are  thus  confused  to  ill. 

Many  are  strong  and  rich,  and  would  be  just, 

But  live  among  their  suffering  fellow-men 

As  if  none  felt:  they  know  not  what  they  do. 

PROMETHEUS.    Thy  words  are  like  a  cloud  of  winged  snakes; 

And  yet  I  pity  those  they  torture  not. 

FURY.    Thou  pitiest  them?     I  speak  no  more!        [VANISHES] 

PROMETHEUS  Ah  woe! 

Ah  woe!  Alas!  pain,  pain  ever,  for  ever! 

I  close  my  tearless  eyes,  but  see  more  clear 

Thy  works  within  my  woe-illumed  mind, 

Thou  subtle  tyrant!    Peace  is  in  the  grave. 

The  grave  hides  all  things  beautiful  and  good: 

I  am  a  God  and  cannot  find  it  there, 

Nor  would  I  seek  it:  for,  though  dread  revenge, 

This  is  defeat,  fierce  king,  not  victory. 

The  sights  with  which  thou  torturest  gird  my  soul 

With  new  endurance,  till  the  hour  arrives 

When  they  shall  be  no  types  of  things  which  are. 

PANTHEA.    Alas!  what  sawest  thou? 

PROMETHEUS    There  are  two  woes: 

To  speak,  and  to  behold;  thou  spare  me  one. 

Names  are  there,  Nature's  sacred  watchwords,  they 

Were  borne  aloft  in  bright  emblazonry; 

The  nations  thronged  around,  and  cried  aloud, 

As  with  one  voice,  Truth,  liberty,  and  love! 

Suddenly  fierce  confusion  fell  from  heaven 

Among  them:  there  was  strife,  deceit,  and  fear. 

Tyrants  rushed  in,  and  did  divide  the  spoil. 

This  was  the  shadow  of  the  truth  I  saw." 


THE   TITAN   MYTH  59 

The  victory  of  Prometheus  is  in  his  declaration  that 
he  pities  those  who  are  not  tortured  by  such  scenes.  He 
had '"already  disclosed  this  pitiful  heart  in  his  first 
speech;  and,  desiring  to  hear  the  curse  he  had  originally 
launched  on  Zeus,  and  being  gratified  in  this  wish  by  the 
Earth,  he  had  revoked  it: 

"It  doth  repent  me:  words  are  quick  and  vain; 
Grief  for  awhile  is  blind,  and  so  was  mine. 
I  wish  no  living  thing  to  suffer  pain." 

Thus  he  had  forgiven  his  great  enemy.  \ 
As  I  read  the  play,  this  forgiveness  of  Zeus  by  Pro 
metheus  makes  the  predestined  hour  of  the  downfall  of 
Zeus.  The  chariot  bears  aloft  the  new  principle  of  su 
preme  being,  a  higher  and  younger-born  principle,  which 
exceeds  that  which  Zeus  embodied,  just  as  Zeus  had  in 
his  birth  been  a  higher  principle  than  the  old  reign  con 
tained;  and  Zeus  is  flung  headlong,  like  Lucifer,  into 
the  abyss  of  past  things.  Thus  Shelley,  as  is  the  uni 
versal  way  of  genius,  had  created  a  great  work  by 
fusing  in  it  two  divergent  products  of  the  human  spirit 
—  the  Hellenic  idea  of  a  higher  power  superseding  the 
lower,  and  the  Christian  idea  that  this  power  was  one  of 
non-resistance,  of  forgiveness,  of  love.  The  reign  of 
love  now  begins  in  the  poem:  Prometheus  is  released  and 
wedded  with  Asia,  who  stands  for  the  spirit  of  nature, 
in  which  marriage  is  typified  the  union  of  the  human 
soul  with  nature,  the  harmony  of  man  and  nature,  and 
he  shares  in  the  millennium  which  is  thus  established  on/ 
earth. 

At  the  end,  you  observe,  the  Titan  Myth  drops  away; 
it  does  not  appear  in  the  last  acts;  for  in  it  there  was  no 
such  completion  of  the  Promethean  faith  as  Shelley  de 
scribes. 


60  THE   TORCH 

And  here  I  might  end  the  discussion  of  Shelley's 
handling  of  the  myth;  but  I  cannot  refrain  from  direct 
ing  your  attention  to  the  marvelous  power  of  the  myth 
which  could  so  blend  the  Greek  and  Christian  genius, 
and  contain  the  passion  of  the  French  Revolution 
issuing  in  the  highest  and  most  extreme  forms  of  Chris 
tian  ethics  —  in  non-resistance,  that  is,  and  in  the  for 
giveness  of  enemies.  I  say  nothing  of  the  practical  wis 
dom  of  this  doctrine;  what  is  it,  but  the  old  verses? 

"But  I  say  unto  you,  that  ye  resist  not  evil ;  but  whosoever 
shall  smite  thee  on  thy  right  cheek,  turn  to  him  the  other 
also:" 

but  I  desire  that  you  should  identify  this  wisdom  with 
its  moment  of  utterance.  The  French  Revolution  — 
the  Revolution  of  the  Terror  and  the  block,  of  the 
burnt  chateaux  and  the  Napoleonic  wars,  was  over  and 
done  with;  Shelley,  in  whom  its  spirit  burnt  as  the 
pure  flame,  had  rejected  its  methods,  while  holding  to 
its  ideals.  He  had  lifted  it  from  a  political  to  a  moral 
cause:  he  had  abandoned  the  sword  as  its  Evangel,  and 
he  put  persuasion  in  the  place  of  force,  and  love  in  the 
place  of  hate,  and  the  genius  of  victory  which  he  invoked 
was  the  conversion  of  society  by  the  stricken  cheek 
and  the  lost  cloak.  The  idea  of  humanity  was  the 
fountain  of  his  thought  and  the  armor  of  his  argument. 
I  will  not  refrain  from  saying  that  the  idea  of  a  suffer 
ing  humanity,  which  finds  the  path  of  progress  in  invin 
cible  opposition  to  the  ruling  gods  of  the  hour  in  the  faith 
in  greater  divinities  to  come,  is  properly  crowned  and 
consecrated  by  this  doctrine,  that  patient  forgiveness  of 
the  wrong  is  the  essence  of  victory  over  it,  and  the  sure 
road  to  its  downfall.  But  the  significance  of  such  a  myth 


THE   TITAN    MYTH  61 

is  not  to  be  exhausted  by  one  poet,  or  by  one  treatment; 
and  in  my  next  lecture  I  shall  take  up  the  work  of  Keats, 
Goethe,  Herder,  and  Schlegel,  in  interpreting  life,  as 
they  conceived  it,  by  the  same  formula. 

I  have  left  myself  a  moment  to  bring  forward  two 
considerations  which  may  prove  suggestive.  The  first 
is  the  analogy  between  Hebrew  and  Greek  myths  in  the 
point  that  whereas  in  Eden  the  eating  of  the  fruit  of  the 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  whereby  man  became  as 
God,  was  the  occasion  of  man's  ills,  so  in  the  myth  of 
Greece  the  sharing  of  men  in  the  divine  fire  was  the 
cause  of  the  sorrows  of  civilization.  The  second  is  that 
in  the  drama  of  the  Book  of  Job  there  is  a  strong  likeness 
to  the  situation  in  Prometheus,  in  the  point  that  there  is 
no  action,  but  only  a  passive  suffering  in  the  principal 
character;  and  that  in  this  suffering  there  is  a  dissent 
from  the  wisdom  of  Divine  ways;  that  Job  holds  to  his 
integrity  and  faith  in  his  own  righteousness  in  the  face 
of  all  disaster  and  all  argument,  in  quite  the  Promethean 
spirit,  obdurately;  and  that  he  has  the  Promethean  faith 
in  the  issue.  The  situation  lies  in  the  verse: 

"Though  he  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  in  him;  but  I  will 
maintain  my  ways  before  him." 

The  dignity  of  the  human  soul  is  dramatically  upheld 
at  the  great  climax  of  Job's  final  assertion  of  his  right 
eousness;  and  the  situation  is  solved  only  by  the  voice 
from  the  whirlwind  declaring  that  as  nature  is  a  mystery, 
much  more  must  human  life  find  mystery  as  an  element 
of  its  being.  But  in  this  great  drama  —  one  of  the 
marvelous  works  of  human  genius  —  though  there  is  the 
presence  of  Unjust  suffering,  of  human  integrity,  and  of  a 
final  victory  of  the  right  —  there  is  no  such  clear  presen- 


62  THE   TORCH 

tation  of  the  idea  and  its  operation,  as  is  found  in  the 
Promethean  legend  —  the  idea  formulated  in  this  myth 
by  the  race  out  of  its  knowledge  of  its  own  life,  not  as 
a  dramatic  incident  such  as  Job's,  but  as  a  pervading  and 
constant  law  —  the  idea  that  the  progress  of  man  lies 
in  an  immortal  suffering,  an  invincible  endurance  of  the 
injustice  of  the  present  world,  in  anticipation  of  the  ab 
solute  justice  known  only  to  the  prophetic  heart  within. 
This  idea  is  a  natural  product  of  man's  reflection  on  his 
history,  a  natural  interpretation  of  his  experience;  and 
he  finds  it  imaginatively  embodied  in  Prometheus  more 
adequately  and  humanly  than  elsewhere.  It  has  entered 
into  thousands  of  lives  in  this  century  of  the  Revolution, 
with  both  illumination  and  courage;  sharing  in  this  idea, 
and  the  life  which  is  led  in  obedience  to  it,  the  humblest 
of  men  shares  in  the  sublimity  of  the  great  Titan. 


*  JL+* 

THE  TITAN  MYTH 

II 

THE  importance  of  history  in  literature  can  hardly  be 
emphasized  too  much.  I  have  not  hesitated  to  speak  of 
mythology  and  chivalry,  and  even  of  the  Scriptures,  as 
transformations  of  history,  and  of  imaginative  literature 
as  the  spiritual  after-life  both  of  historical  events  and 
conditions  in  the  narrow  sense,  and  of  general  human  ex 
perience  in  the  broad  sense.  I  have  directed  attention 
also  to  the  influence  of  history  in  a  more  direct  way,  hi 
the  literature  of  the  last  century  —  to  its  inspirational 
power  there;  out  of  it  came,  in  particular,  the  pictur- 
esqueness  of  the  historical  novel;  and,  inasmuch  as  the 
romantic  spirit  of  the  century  explored  all  lands  and 
times  for  new  material,  and  eagerly  absorbed  all  that 
travel  or  research  brought  forward  new  to  the  European 
mind,  it  naturally  happened  that  the  conception  of  his 
torical  humanity  became  one  of  rich  variety;  the  formula 
—  "many  men,  many  minds"  —  received  unending  illus 
tration,  and  it  might  be  thought  that  the  result  would 
have  been  to  impress  on  the  race  a  sense  of  hopeless  di 
versity  in  its  members  rather  than  of  unbroken  unity. 
But  history  had  this  inspirational  power,  not  only  in  lit 
erature,  but  in  philosophy;  the  mind  of  man  was  stimu 
lated  to  find  in  all  this  new  mass  of  different  detail  a 
single  principle  that  would  explain  and  reconcile  the  ap 
es 


64  THE   TORCH 

parent  confusion  —  to  frame,  that  is,  a  philosophy  of 
history.  Herder,  the  German  writer,  was  one  of  the 
most  influential  of  the  great  men  who  attacked  this  prob 
lem;  he  gave  his  life  to  it.  At  the  dawn  of  a  new  age,  you 
know,  there  is  often  a  singular  phenomenon:  men  of 
genius  arise,  with  a  poetical  cast  of  mind,  and  they  are 
prophetic  of  the  new  day  because  they  show  forth  some 
single  idea  or  mood  of  it  though  they  do  not  grasp  the 
whole;  they  catch  like  morning  clouds,  some  the  red, 
some  the  gold,  some  the  purple  ray,  but  none  of  them 
gives  that  one  white  light  which  will  prevail  when  the 
day  is  fully  come.  An  outburst  of  poetry  —  the  prev 
alence  of  a  poetical  view  of  things  —  is  the  sign  of  an 
advance  along  the  whole  line.  Herder  was  a  man  of 
this  kind;  and  it  is  easy  now  to  say  that  his  method  was 
imperfectly  scientific,  and  that  his  imagination  and  desire 
led  him  astray.  Nevertheless  he  had  one  of  those  minds 
which,  if  it  does  not  build  a  system  squared  of  solid 
timber,  flings  seeds  on  every  wind  like  a  living  tree. 
His  intellect  was  capacious,  and  in  the  attempt  he  made 
to  include  all  things  in  his  philosophizing  he  seems  an 
anticipation  of  Herbert  Spencer;  in  his  theorizing,  too, 
students  find  innumerable  thoughts  —  that  are  half- 
guesses —  which  are  almost  the  words  of  Darwin.  He 
was,  thus,  you  see,  in  the  true  path  of  advance;  he 
caught  the  first  gleams  of  the  new  hour  of  time.  He  was 
interested,  over  and  above  all  else,  in  humanity  and  its 
destiny  as  disclosed  in  history.  He  saw  in  history  the 
working  of  a  law  of  beneficence  and  justice,  which  though 
it  might  not  seem  such  when  viewed  in  its  means,  always 
and  unfailingly  is  such  when  viewed  in  its  end;  thus  from 
the  concourse  and  struggle  of  forces  in  civilization  there 
is  always  issuing  the  slow  triumph  of  reason.  This  was 


THE    TITAN    MYTH  65 

what  Herder  conceived  as  the  law  of  progress;  and  is 
the  view  taken  in  his  leading  prose  works,  the  "Ideas  on 
the  History  of  Mankind"  and  the  "Letters  for  the  Fur 
therance  of  Humanity,"  which  are  still  great  and  fruit 
ful  books.  At  the  very  end  of  a  life  spent  thus  in 
meditation  on  the  career  of  man  in  civilization,  Herder 
set  forth  his  faith  in  the  principle  of  progress  in  a  series 
of  dramatic  scenes  built  out  of  the  myth  of  Prometheus. 
He  identified  the  fire  which  was  the  Titan's  character 
istic  gift  to  mortals,  as  civilization,  and  saw  in  it  the 
two-fold  symbol  —  first,  of  the  arts  themselves,  secondly, 
of  that  divine  soul  which  restlessly  excites  and  spurs  on 
all  the  powers  of  man. 

I  will  sketch  very  briefly  the  story  as  Herder  tells  it. 
Prometheus  has  been  long  chained  to  the  rock  and  (as 
in  Shelley's  poem)  time  has  ripened  and  softened  his 
heart,  partly  because  he  knows  that  his  work  is  pros 
pering  among  men.  In  the  first  scene  he  hears  a  distant 
song  of  victory,  and  voices  announces  to  him  that  reason 
fructifies  the  earth.  In  later  scenes,  first  the  daughters 
of  the  Ocean  and  old  Oceanus  himself  come  complaining 
that  mankind  disturbs  the  sea  with  ships,  changes  the 
course  of  the  waters  by  dams  and  canals,  and  brings 
the  ends  of  the  earth  together  with  commerce;  but 
Prometheus  replies,  prophesying:  — 

"The  sea  which  girds  the  earth  shall  be  the  mediator  and 
peace-maker  of  the  nations." 

Then  the  Dryads,  daughters  of  the  earth,  come  with  a 
similar  tale;  but  Prometheus  tells  them  that  in  the  end 
man  will  make  a  garden  of  the  earth;  and  other  mytho 
logical  characters  enter,  each  with  its  tale,  Ceres,  the 
goddess  of  harvest,  who  works  with  man  —  and  Bac- 


66  THE   TORCH 

chus,  the  giver  of  the  vine;  at  last  Hercules  and  Theseus 
release  the  Titan,  all  go  before  Themis,  the  goddess  of 
justice  who  judges  the  cause  between  Prometheus  and 
the  gods,  and  gives  the  decision  for  Prometheus.  Pallas 
then  leads  to  Prometheus  Agatia,  the  pure  spirit  of  hu 
manity,  and  the  drama  ends.  You  see  the  work  is  little 
more  than  a  series  of  picturesque  classical  tableaux,  in 
which  the  victory  of  man  through  reason  is  set  forth 
with  a  maintenance  of  self-sacrifice,  perseverance,  pa 
tience,  social  labor  and  love  as  the  essential  elements  of 
the  moral  ideal. 

A  few  years  before,  Schlegel  had  produced  a  Prome 
theus  in  the  form  of  a  poem,  in  the  same  realm  of  his 
tory  but  with  much  less  scenic  elaboration.  In  it  he 
describes  the  Golden  Age  before  the  Titan  War,  the  deso 
late  state  of  man  after  Zeus  came  to  the  throne,  and 
how  Prometheus  made  of  clay  a  new  race,  and  animated 
the  clay  with  the  heavenly  fire.  Themis  reproves  him 
for  this  act,  and  foretells  the  sorrows  of  this  Promethean 
man  —  this  being  of  divine  desire  chained  to  the  earth 
and  tyrannized  over  by  the  thought  of  the  past  and  of 
the  future  alike.  But  Prometheus  believes,  he  says, 
that  good  will  not  die,  that  the  toil  of  one  generation  will 
help  the  next,  that  human  will  reduces  life  to  order  and 
human  action  subdues  nature;  and  that  out  of  the  midst 
of  opposing  principles  civilization  grows  to  more  and 
more.  The  law  of  progress  is  stated  with  sure  opti 
mism:  though  there  may  be  ages  of  terror  and  apparent 
degeneration,  yet  the  immortal  principle  of  good  in  the 
race  is  such  that  it  passes  invulnerable  through  all  his 
tory,  and  accomplishes  the  work  of  civilization.  The 
poem  is  no  more  than  a  reply  to  the  sad  prophecy  of 
Themis,  and  perhaps  incidentally  to  such  reactionaries 


THE   TITAN   MYTH  67 

as  saw  in  the  Reign  of  Terror  and  the  Revolution 
generally  the  denial  of  progress  and  of  the  social  ideal. 
But  in  the  sphere  of  history,  one  of  the  latest  rework- 
ings  of  the  myth,  the  Prometheus  of  Quinet,  the  French 
poet,  contains  the  most  interesting  variation.  He  con 
ceived  firmly  the  unity  of  history;  and  in  obedience  to 
this  conception  he  endeavored  to  unite  the  Greek  myth 
with  Christianity,  not  ethically  as  Shelley  did,  but  his 
torically.  "If  Prometheus"  —  he  says  in  his  preface  — 
"is  the  eternal  prophet,  as  his  name  indicates,  each  new 
age  of  humanity  can  put  new  oracles  in  the  mouth  of  the 
Titan.  Perhaps  there  is  no  character  so  well  fitted  to 
express  the  feelings  —  the  premature  and  half  melan 
choly  desires  —  in  which  our  age  is  enchained."  In  this 
spirit  he  wrote  a  drama  in  three  parts:  the  first  depicts 
the  creation  of  man  by  Prometheus,  the  gift  of  fire  — 
that  is,  the  soul  —  and  the  beginning  of  life  in  sorrow. 
The  second  part  depicts  the  suffering  of  Prometheus  on 
Caucasus,  in  which  the  foreknowledge  of  the  fall  of 
Zeus  becomes  a  prophecy  of  Christ's  coming.  The 
third  act  depicts  the  advent  of  Christianity.  The  Arch 
angels,  Raphael  and  Michael  descend  on  Caucasus,  and 
release  Prometheus,  who  rises  transfigured;  the  gods  of 
Olympus  prostrate  themselves  before  him  and  the  angels, 
and  pray  in  vain  for  life.  Then  Prometheus  has  a  singu 
lar  thought  which  to  me  is  the  most  dramatic  in  the 
play:  as  he  listens  to  the  death-song  of  the  gods,  his  mind 
is  clouded  with  a  doubt  —  will  not  the  new  divinity  also 
pass  away?  —  and  does  he  not  already  see  a  new  Cauca 
sus  before  him  in  the  distant  time?  —  will  he  not  be 
bound  again?  —  The  angels  comfort  him,  and  he  ascends 
to  heaven;  but  as  he  disappears  in  that  hierarchy  of  celes 
tial  peace  and  love,  he  still  wears  the  shadow  of  thought 


68  THE   TORCH 

—  for  he  remembers  that  on  earth  men  still  suffer.  This 
attempt  at  a  true  synthesis  of  the  Greek  and  Christian 
imagination  —  in  behalf  of  the  unity  of  history  —  is  a 
most  interesting  illustration  of  the  spirit  of  the  century; 
which  was  on  the  whole  a  century  of  peace-making  be 
tween  the  great  historic  elements  of  spiritual  civilization, 
a  drawing  together  and  harmonizing  of  religions,  philos 
ophies  and  half-developed  and  fragmentary  doctrines,  by 
virtue  of  the  identical  principle  they  contain;  or  as  Herder 
said,  in  consequence  of  that  symmetry  of  human  reason 
which  makes  all  nobler  minds  tend  to  think  the  same 
thoughts. 

Interesting  as  the  historical  point  of  view  is,  it  is  plain 
that  the  myth  loses  something  of  its  poetical  quality,  be 
comes  pure  allegory,  becomes  almost  mechanical;  it  be 
comes,  in  fact,  what  is  called  poetical  machinery,  a  hard 
and  fast  means  of  figurative  expression.  The  characters 
in  Herder  and  Schlegel  move  like  marionettes,  and  you 
hear  the  voice  of  the  author  apart  from  his  work.  Let  us 
turn  to  a  mind  in  which  the  myth  really  was  alive  again, 
with  creative  as  well  as  expressive  power  —  the  mind  of 
Keats.  In  his  "Hyperion,"  the  tale  is  of  the  Titans  im 
mediately  after  their  overthrow;  they  have  been  de 
throned  from  power,  Saturn  is  an  exile  hiding  in  the 
deep  glens,  but  their  ruin  is  still  incomplete;  Hyperion 
still  is  lord  in  the  sun,  and  the  others  are  at  liberty  to 
gather  for  a  great  council.  In  order  to  display  the  idea  of 
Keats,  let  me  approach  it  indirectly.  The  point  of  view 
which  he  takes  has  much  affinity  with  science  —  more, 
that  is,  than  with  either  history  or  ethics.  Modern  the 
ories  of  evolution  have  accustomed  our  minds  to  the 
conception  of  an  original  state  of  the  universe,  vast, 
homogeneous,  undiversified,  simple;  out  of  this  —  to 


THE   TITAN    MYTH  69 

adopt  the  nebular  theory  —  slowly  great  masses  con 
glomerated,  gathered  into  sun  and  planets;  and  out  of 
these  arose  finally  living  things  on  a  smaller  scale  but  of 
higher  perfection  of  being.  Now  if  you  will  think  of 
man's  progressive  conceptions  of  the  divinity  as  some 
thing  similar  to  this,  as  parallel  to  it,  you  will  have 
Keats's  idea.  In  the  beginning  were  the  vast,  vague,  un 
defined,  half-unconscious  beings,  like  Uranus,  the  heav 
ens,  and  Gaia,  the  earth,  and  Chronos,  time;  to  them 
succeeded  the  more  conscious  and  half -humanized  brood 
of  the  Titans,  like  the  sun  and  planets,  as  it  were;  last 
came  the  gods  of  Olympus,  in  the  perfection  of  full  hu 
manity,  and  on  the  physical  scale  of  man  in  form,  feature 
and  spirit.  The  change  from  the  Titanic  to  the  Olym 
pian  rule,  was  like  the  change  from  one  geological  age  of 
vast  forms  of  brute  and  vegetable  life  to  another  of  smaller 
but  nobler  species.  The  higher  principle  displaces  the 
lower,  according  to  that  Greek  idea  of  progress  which  I 
have  described;  and  this  successive  displacement  of  the 
lower  by  the  higher  is  the  law  of  development  in  the 
Universe. 

In  Keats's  poem,  Oceanus,  speaking  to  the  Titans  in 
council  as  the  wisest  of  them  all,  sets  forth  the  matter 
plainly,  and  I  should  like  you  to  notice  how  the  concep 
tion  of  a  progressive  order  in  nature  (not  as  hitherto  in 
civilization  merely)  and  the  conception  of  the  necessity 
of  accepting  truth,  bear  the  mark  of  the  scientific  spirit. 
Oceanus  thus  speaks:  — 

"We  fall  by  course  of  Nature's  law,  not  force 
,  Of  thunder,  or  of  Jove.     Great  Saturn,  thou 

Hast  sifted  well  the  atom-universe ; 

But  for  this  reason,  that  thou  art  the  King, 

And  only  blind  from  sheer  supremacy, 


70  THE   TORCH 

One  avenue  was  shaded  from  thine  eyes, 

Through  which  I  wander'd  to  eternal  truth. 

And  first,  as  thou  wast  not  the  first  of  powers, 

So  art  thou  not  the  last;  it  cannot  be, 

Thou  art  not  the  beginning  nor  the  end. 

From  chaos  and  parental  darkness  came 

Light,  the  first  fruits  of  that  intestine  broil, 

That  sullen  ferment,  which  for  wondrous  ends 

Was  ripening  in  itself.    The  ripe  hour  came, 

And  with  it  light,  and  light,  engendering 

Upon  its  own  producer,  forthwith  touch'd 

The  whole  enormous  matter  into  life. 

Upon  that  very  hour,  our  parentage, 

The  Heavens  and  the  Earth,  were  manifest: 

Then  thou  first-born,  and  we  the  giant-race, 

Found  ourselves  ruling  new  and  beauteous  realms. 

Now  comes  the  pain  of  truth,  to  whom  7t  is  pain; 

O  folly!  for  to  bear  all  naked  truths, 

And  to  envisage  circumstance,  all  calm, 

That  is  the  top  of  sovereignty.    Mark  well! 

As  Heaven  and  Earth  are  fairer,  fairer  far 

Than  Chaos  and  blank  Darkness,  though  once  chiefs; 

And  as  we  show  beyond  that  Heaven  and  Earth 

In  form  and  shape  compact  and  beautiful, 

In  will,  in  action  free,  companionship, 

And  thousand  other  signs  of  purer  life; 

So  on  our  heels  a  fresh  perfection  treads, 

A  power  more  strong  in  beauty,  born  of  us 

And  fated  to  excel  us,  as  we  pass 

In  glory  that  old  Darkness:  nor  are  we 

Thereby  more  conquer'd,  than  by  us  the  rule 

Of  shapeless  Chaos.    Say,  doth  the  dull  soil 

Quarrel  with  the  proud  forests  it  hath  fed 

And  feedeth  still,  more  comely  than  itself? 

Can  it  deny  the  chiefdom  of  green  groves? 

Or  shall  the  tree  be  envious  of  the  dove 

Because  it  cooeth,  and  hath  snowy  wings 

To  wander  wherewithal  and  find  its  joys? 

We  are  such  forest-trees,  and  our  fair  boughs 


THE   TITAN   MYTH  71 

Have  bred  forth,  not  pale  solitary  doves, 
But  eagles  golden-feather'd,  who  do  tower 
Above  us  in  their  beauty,  and  must  reign 
In  right  thereof;  for  't  is  the  eternal  law 
That  first  in  beauty  should  be  first  in  might: 
Yea,  by  that  law,  another  race  may  drive 
Our  conquerors  to  mourn  as  we  do  now. 
Have  ye  beheld  the  young  God  of  the  Seas, 
My  dispossessor?    Have  ye  seen  his  face? 
Have  ye  beheld  his  chariot,  foam'd  along 
By  noble  winged  creatures  he  hath  made? 
I  saw  him  on  the  calmed  waters  scud, 
With  such  a  glow  of  beauty  in  his  eyes, 
That  it  enforc'd  me  to  bid  sad  farewell 
To  all  my  empire;  farewell  sad  I  took, 
And  hither  came,  to  see  how  dolorous  fate 
Had  wrought  upon  ye,  and  how  I  might  best 
Give  consolation  in  this  woe  extreme. 
Receive  the  truth,  and  let  it  be  your  balm." 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  new  principle  of  being,  in 
whose  advent  lay  the  ruin  of  the  old  world,  is  beauty. 

"  'T  is  the  eternal  law 
That  first  in  beauty  should  be  first  in  might." 

This  is,  as  you  know,  Keats's  distinctive  mark  —  the  per 
ception  and  adoration  of  beauty.  What  love  was  to: 
Shelley,  that  beauty  was  to  Keats  —  the  open  door  to 
divinity;  he  saw  life  as  a  form  of  beauty.  And  he  means 
what  he  says  —  not  that  beauty  has  strength  as  an  added 
quality,  but  that  beauty  is  strength,  and  reigns  in  its  own 
right.  This  rise  of  the  Olympians  was  beauty's  moment 
of  birth  in  the  minds  of  men;  this  birth  was  a  revelation, 
like  a  new  religion,  and  it  is  presented  as  such  by  Keats 
in  a  two-fold  way.  First  it  is  a  revelation  to  the  Titans. 
You  have  seen  how  Oceanus  on  beholding  the  new  god 


72  THE   TORCH 

of  the  sea,  gave  up  the  rule  over  it.    So  Clymene,  who 
describes  herself  — 

"O  Father,  I  am  here  the  simplest  voice"  — 
tells  her  experience: 

"I  stood  upon  a  shore,  a  pleasant  shore, 
Where  a  sweet  clime  was  breathed  from  a  land 
Of  fragrance,  quietness,  and  trees,  and  flowers. 
Full  of  calm  joy  it  was,|  as  I  of  grief; 
Too  full  of  joy  and  soft  delicious  warmth; 
So  that  I  felt  a  movement  in  my  heart 
To  chide,  and  to  reproach  that  solitude 
With  songs  of  misery,  music  of  our  woes; 
And  sat  me  down,  and  took  a  mouthed  shell 

,  And  murmur'd  into  it,  and  made  melody  — 

0  melody  no  more!  for  while  I  sang, 
And  with  poor  skill  let  pass  into  the  breeze 
The  dull  shell's  echo,  from  a  bowery  strand 
Just  opposite,  an  island  of  the  sea, 

There  came  enchantment  with  the  shifting  wind, 
That  did  both  drown  and  keep  alive  my  ears. 

1  threw  my  shell  away  upon  the  sand, 
And  a  wave  fill'd  it,  as  my  sense  was  fill'd 
With  that  new  blissful  golden  melody. 

A  living  death  was  in  each  gush  of  sounds, 

Each  family  of  rapturous  hurried  notes, 

That  fell,  one  after  one,  yet  all  at  once, 

Like  pearl  beads  dropping  sudden  from  their  string: 

And  then  another,  then  another  strain, 

Each  like  a  dove  leaving  its  olive  perch, 

With  music  wing'd  instead  of  silent  plumes 

To  hover  round  my  head,  and  make  me  sick 

Of  joy  and  grief  at  once.    Grief  overcame, 

And  I  was  stopping  up  my  frantic  ears, 

When,  past  all  hindrance  of  my  trembling  hands, 

A  voice  came  sweeter,  sweeter  than  all  tune, 

And  still  it  cried,  'Apollo!  young  Apollo! 

The  morning-bright  Apollo!  young  Apollo!' 

I  fled,  it  follow'd  me,  and  cried,  'Apollo!'  " 


THE   TITAN    MYTH  73 

Beauty  is  also  a  revelation  to  the  gods  themselves  in 
their  own  bosoms  where  it  has  sprung  into  life.  The  pas 
sage  in  which  Apollo's  awakening  is  described  —  full 
of  a  poet's  personal  touches  of  his  own  experience  in 
coming  into  possession  of  himself  —  is  one  of  the  most 
impassioned  in  all  Keats 's  writing: 

"Together  had  he  left  his  mother  fair 
And  his  twin-sister  sleeping  in  their  bower, 
And  in  the  morning  twilight  wandered  forth 
Beside  the  osiers  of  a  rivulet, 
Full  ankle-deep  in  lilies  of  the  vale. 
The  nightingale  had  ceas'd,  and  a  few  stars 
Were  lingering  in  the  heavens,  while  the  thrush 
Began  calm-throated.    Throughout  all  the  isle 
There  was  no  covert,  no  retired  cave 
Unhaunted  by  the  numerous  noise  of  waves, 
Though  scarcely  heard  in  many  a  green  recess. 
He  listen'd,  and  he  wept,  and  his  bright  tears 
Went  trickling  down  the  golden  bow  he  held. 
Thus  with  half-shut  suffused  eyes  he  stood, 
While  from  beneath  some  cumbrous  boughs  hard  by 
With  solemn  step  an  awful  Goddess  came, 
And  there  was  purport  in  her  looks  for  him, 
Which  he  with  eager  guess  began  to  read 
Perplex'd,  the  while  melodiously  he  said: 
'How  cam'st  thou  over  the  unfooted  sea? 
Or  hath  that  antique  mien  and  robed  form 
Mov'd  in  these  vales  invisible  till  now? 
Sure  I  have  heard  those  vestments  sweeping  o'er 
The  fallen  leaves,  when  I  have  sat  alone 
In  cool  mid- forest.    Surely  I  have  traced 
The  rustle  of  those  ample  skirts  about 
These  grassy  solitudes,  and  seen  the  flowers 
Lift  up  their  heads,  as  still  the  whisper  pass'd. 
Goddess !     I  have  beheld  those  eyes  before, 
And  their  eternal  calm,  and,  all  that  face, 
Or  I  have  dream'd.'  —  'Yes/  said  the  supreme  shape, 


74  THE   TORCH 

'Thou  hast  dream Jd  of  me;  and  awaking  up 

Didst  find  a  lyre  all  golden  by  thy  side, 

Whose  strings  touch'd  by  thy  fingers,  all  the  vast 

Unwearied  ear  of  the  whole  universe 

Listen'd  in  pain  and  pleasure  at  the  birth 

Of  such  new  tuneful  wonder.    Is  't  not  strange 

That  thou  shouldst  weep,  so  gifted?     Tell  me,  youth, 

What  sorrow  thou  canst  feel;  for  I  am  sad 

When  thou  dost  shed  a  tear:  explain  thy  griefs 

To  one  who  in  this  lonely  isle  hath  been 

The  watcher  of  thy  sleep  and  hours  of  life, 

From  the  young  day  when  first  thy  infant  hand 

Pluck'd  witless  the  weak  flowers,  till  thine  arm 

Could  bend  that  bow  heroic  to  all  times. 

Show  thy  heart's  secret  to  an  ancient  Power 

Who  hath  forsaken  old  and  sacred  thrones 

For  prophecies  of  thee,  and  for  the  sake 

Of  loveliness  new-born.'  —  Apollo  then, 

With  sudden  scrutiny  and  gloomless  eyes, 

Thus  answer'd,  while  his  white  melodious  throat 

Throbb'd  with  the  syllables:  — ' Mnemosyne! 

Thy  name  is  on  my  tongue,  I  know  not  how; 

Why  should  I  tell  thee  what  thou  so  well  seest? 

Why  should  I  strive  to  show  what  from  thy  lips 

Would  come  no  mystery?     For  me,  dark,  dark, 

And  painful  vile  oblivion  seals  my  eyes: 

I  strive  to  search  wherefor  I  am  so  sad, 

Until  a  melancholy  numbs  my  limbs; 

And  then  upon  the  grass  I  sit,  and  moan, 

Like  one  who  once  had  wings.  —  O  why  should  I 

Feel  curs'd  and  thwarted,  when  the  liegeless  air 

Yields  to  my  step  aspirant?  why  should  I 

Spurn  the  green  turf  as  hateful  to  my  feet? 

Goddess  benign,  point  forth  some  unknown  thing: 

Are  there  not  other  regions  than  this  isle? 

What  are  the  stars?    There  is  the  sun,  the  sun! 

And  the  most  patient  brilliance  of  the  moon! 

And  stars  by  thousands!     Point  me  out  the  way 

To  any  one  particular  beauteous  star, 


THE   TITAN   MYTH  75 

And  I  will  flit  into  it  with  my  lyre, 

And  make  its  silvery  splendor  pant  with  bliss 

I  have  heard  the  cloudy  thunder:  Where  is  power? 

Whose  hand,  whose  essence,  what  divinity 

Makes  this  alarum  in  the  elements, 

While  I  here  idle  listen  on  the  shores 

In  fearless  yet  in  aching  ignorance? 

O  tell  me,  lonely  Goddess,  by  thy  harp, 

That  waileth  every  morn  and  eventide, 

Tell  me  why  thus  I  rave,  about  these  groves ! 

Mute  thou  remainest.  —  Mute!  yet  I  can  read 

A  wondrous  lesson  in  thy  silent  face: 

Knowledge  enormous  makes  a  God  of  me. 

Names,  deeds,  grey  legends,  dire  events,  rebellions, 

Majesties,  sovran  voices,  agonies, 

Creations  and  destroyings  all  at  once 

Pour  into  the  wide  hollows  of  my  brain, 

And  deify  me,  as  if  some  blithe  wine 

Or  bright  elixir  peerless  I  had  drunk, 

And  so  become  immortal/  —  Thus  the  God, 

While  his  enkindled  eyes,  with  level  glance 

Beneath  his  white  soft  temples,  steadfast  kept 

Trembling  with  light  upon  Mnemosyne. 

Soon  wild  commotions  shook  him,  and  made  flush 

All  the  immortal  fairness  of  his  limbs; 

Most  like  the  struggle  at  the  gate  of  death ; 

Or  liker  still  to  one  who  should  take  leave 

Of  pale  immortal  death,  and  with  a  pang 

As  hot  as  death's  is  chill,  with  fierce  convulse 

Die  into  life:  so  young  Apollo  anguish'd; 

His  very  hair,  his  golden  tresses  famed 

Kept  undulation  round  his  eager  neck. 

During  the  pain  Mnemosyne  upheld 

Her  arms  as  one  who  prophesied.  —  At  length 

Apollo  shriek'd;  — and  lo!  from  all  his  limbs 

Celestial.  ..." 

The  birth-cry  of  Apollo  was  the  death-cry  of  Keats: 
there  the  golden  pen  fell  from  his  hands,  and  the  poem 
« —  a  fragment  —  ends. 


76  THE   TORCH 

There  is  one  detail  in  Keats's  work,  which  though  it  is 
subsidiary,  deserves  mention  because  it  completes  the 
reality  of  the  Titan  Myth  in  an  important  way.  In  all  the 
other  writers,  whom  I  have  named,  you  do  not  get  any 
idea  of  the  Titans  physically,  you  do  not  see  them  as  Ti 
tans.  In  Shelley,  and  the  rest,  Prometheus  is  essentially 
a  man;  he  has  human  proportion;  in  Keats  Prometheus 
does  not  appear  at  all.  But  Keats  has  realized  the  Ti 
tanic  figures  to  the  imagination  as  distinct  and  noble 
forms;  they  have  the  massiveness  of  limb  and  immobil 
ity  of  feature  that  we  associate  with  Egyptian  art,  with 
the  Sphinxes  and  the  Memnons;  yet  each  is  charac 
terized  differently;  Saturn,  Oceanus,  Enceladus,  Thea, 
Mnemosyne  are  individualized,  and  especially  Hyperion 
is  set  forth,  in  ways  of  grandeur.  The  subject  would 
require  more  illustration  than  I  can  now  give  it;  but  let 
me  cite  the  very  remarkable  figure  which  is  found  in  the 
second  version  of  "Hyperion,"  a  version  that  is  as  full  of 
Dante  as  the  first  one  is  of  Milton.  The  figure  is  that  of 
Moneta,  the  solitary  and  ageless  priestess  of  the  temple 
of  the  Titans,  "sole  goddess  of  its  desolation,"  who  gives 
the  poet  the  vision  of  the  past. 

"And  yet  I  had  a  terror  of  her  robes, 
And  chiefly  of  the  veils  that  from  her  brow 
Hung  pale,  and  curtain'd  her  in  mysteries, 
That  made  my  heart  too  small  to  hold  its  blood. 
This  saw  that  Goddess,  and  with  sacred  hand 
Parted  the  veils.    Then  saw  I  a  wan  face, 
Not  pin'd  by  human  sorrows,  but  bright-blanch'd 
By  an  immortal  sickness  which  kills  not ; 
It  works  a  constant  change,  which  happy  death 
Can  put  no  end  to;  deathwards  progressing 
To  no  death  was  that  visage;  it  had  past 
The  lily  and  the  snow;  and  beyond  these 


THE   TITAN    MYTH  77 

I  must  not  think  now,  though  I  saw  that  face. 

But  for  her  eyes  I  should  have  fled  away; 

They  held  me  back  with  a  benignant  light, 

Soft,  mitigated  by  divinest  lids 

Half-clos'd,  and  visionless  entire  they  seem'd 

Of  all  external  things;  they  saw  me  not, 

But  in  blank  splendor  beam'd  like  the  mild  moon, 

Who  comforts  those  she  sees  not,  who  knows  not 

What  eyes  are  upward  cast." 

A  similar  imaginative  power  to  that  shown  here  per 
vades  Keats's  conceptions  of  the  Titans,  and  distin 
guishes  his  work  from  all  others  as  a  creation  in  the  vis 
ible  world  of  the  imagination  such  as  is  not  elsewhere  to 
be  found.  Here  only  is  the  Titan  world  made  nobly  real. 
I  fear  to  weary  you  with  this  long  catalogue  of  the  va 
rious  modern  forms  of  the  Titan  Myth,  but  it  is  neces 
sary  to  develop  the  theme.  I  must  say  at  least  a  word 
about  Goethe's  "Prometheus."  It  is  only  a  brief  frag 
ment  of  a  drama,  and  belongs  to  his  youth.  He  was  but 
twenty-four  when  he  experimented  with  it.  In  the  scenes 
which  we  possess,  Prometheus  is  the  maker  of  the  clay 
images  to  which  he  gives  life  by  the  aid  of  Pallas  —  that 
is,  really,  by  his  own  intelligence.  He  launches  them  as 
men  in  the  career  of  civilization  by  declaring  to  them  the 
principle  of  property;  he  tells  one  to  build  a  house,  and 
to  the  question  whether  it  will  be  for  the  man  himself  or 
for  everybody,  Prometheus  answers  it  shall  be  the  man's 
own  private  possession  and  dwelling;  he  declares  also 
the  principle  of  retaliatory  justice,  saying  on  the  occa 
sion  of  the  first  theft,  that  he  whose  hand  is  against  every 
one,  every  one's  hand  shall  be  against  him;  and  he  an 
nounces  the  fact  and  meaning  of  the  first  death.  The 
drama  does  not  proceed  further.  Its  significance  lies  in 
two  points;  in  the  first  place  it  is  easy  to  see  in  Prome- 


78  THE   TORCH 

theus's  attitude  toward  his  clay  images  and  his  lan 
guage  about  them  a  reflection  of  the  young  poet's  own 
state  of  mind  toward  the  mental  beings  whom  he  creates 
—  a  reflection,  that  is,  of  the  pride  and  glory  of  genius  in 
imaginary  creation.  Secondly,  and  more  importantly, 
the  drama  exhibits  the  intense  desire  of  the  young 
Goethe  for  complete  individual  independence.  In  the 
answer  Prometheus  makes  to  the  messenger  of  Zeus,  who 
remonstrates  with  him,  the  central  point  is  that  Prome 
theus  feels  he  is  a  god  like  Zeus,  and  wants  freedom  to 
do  his  will  in  his  own  realm  as  Zeus  does  in  Olympus. 
Let  Zeus  keep  his  own,  and  let  me  keep  my  own,  he 
says;  he  would  rather  his  clay  images  should  never  live 
than  be  subjects  of  Zeus,  for  being  still  unborn,  they  are 
still  free;  liberty  is  the  true  good,  and  men,  made  by  him, 
shall  be  embodiments  of  his  own  independent  spirit.  In 
all  this  is  the  prophecy  of  Goethe's  own  life.  To  me 
Goethe  is  the  type  of  the  man  who  wants  to  be  let  alone; 
and  he  accomplished  his  desire  in  a  supremely  selfish  tran 
quillity,  in  which  he  used  life  to  develop  himself,  sacri 
ficed  all  things  to  himself,  was  at  once  the  model  and 
the  condemnation  of  self-culture  so  pursued.  In  his 
young  Prometheus  there  is  this  impatient  cry  for  indi 
vidual  liberty,  as  a  basis  of  life;  and  I  discern  little  else 
significant  in  it.  I  must  also  spare  a  word  for  Victor 
Hugo's  "Titan."  The  poem  is  in  the  "Legend  of  the 
Ages."  This  Titan  is  not  Prometheus,  or  any  other  in 
dividual  Titan,  but  is  all  of  them  in  one,  the  giant,  con 
ceived  as  one.  He  is,  of  course,  mankind  —  earth-born 
man,  conceived  as  in  scientific  history,  burrowing  his 
way  out  of  the  planet  itself  —  a  massive  medieval  crea 
ture,  gross  and  violent,  tearing  his  path  through  cave 
and  grotto,  till  at  last  he  emerges  and  sees  the  stars. 


THE   TITAN   MYTH  79 

This  giant  is  clearly  a  symbol  of  man  rising  from  his 
crude  earthliness  of  nature  and  barbaric  ages  up  to  the 
sight  and  knowledge  of  the  heavenly  world.  It  is  a 
type  of  progress,  as  science  and  history  jointly  conceive 
the  evolution  of  humanity. 

I  have  sufficiently  illustrated  how  the  Titan  Myth  in 
its  variety  has  been  employed  to  embody  and  express  the 
idea  of  a  progressive  humanity  in  many  aspects  as  it  has 
appeared  to  different  poets.  The  idea  of  progress  is  in 
our  civilization  a  continuing  and  universal  idea;  and 
Prometheus  is  a  continuing  and  universal  image  of  its 
nature  —  the  race-image  of  a  race-idea.  The  Prome 
thean  situation  is  inherent  in  the  law  of  human  progress, 
however  viewed,  whether  historically  or  scientifically  or 
ethically,  or  in  any  other  way.  Emerson  says 

"The  fiend  that  man  harries, 
Is  Love  of  the  Best." 

The  dream  of  this  Best,  and  the  will  to  bring  it  down  to 
earth  —  the  struggle  with  the  temporary  ruling  worse 
that  is  in  the  world  and  must  be  dethroned  —  the  proud 
and  resolute  suffering  of  all  that  such  a  present  world 
can  inflict  —  the  faith  in  the  final  victory,  are  the  Pro 
methean  characteristics;  but  the  human  spirit,  in  the 
nature  of  the  case,  must  forever  be  in  bonds;  its  succes 
sive  liberations  are  partial  only,  and  in  the  disclosure  of 
a  forever  fairer  dream  in  the  future,  lies  also  the  dis 
closure  of  new  bonds,  for  the  present  is  always  a  state  of 
chains  in  view  of  the  to-morrow;  and  for  man  there  is 
always  to-morrow.  The  great  words  that  seem  the  keys 
of  progress,  such  as  reason,  love,  beauty,  are  only  sym 
bols  of  an  infinite  series  in  life  —  a  series  that  never  ends. 
Such  is  the  abstract  statement  that  progress  involves  the 


So  THE   TORCH 

idea  of  humanity  as  a  Promethean  sufferer.  But  the 
race,  which  requires  picturesque  and  vivid  images  of  its 
highest  faith,  hope  and  thought,  comes  to  its  poets,  like 
the  human  child,  and  says  ever  and  ever  —  "Tell  me  a 
story:  tell  me  a  story  about  myself."  And  the  poet  tells 
the  race  a  new  story  about  itself  —  like  the  mother  of 
Marius  when  she  told  him  of  "the  white  bird  which  he 
must  bear  in  his  bosom  across  the  crowded  market-place 
—  his  soul."  Each  poet  tells  this  new  story  to  the  child 
about  itself  —  a  story  it  did  not  know  before,  and  the 
child  believes  the  story  and  increases  knowledge  and  life 
with  it.  The  question  the  race  asks,  in  this  Myth,  is 
"what  is  most  divine  in  me?"  "What  is  the  god  in  me?" 
f  — and  Shelley  answers,  it  is  all-enduring  and  all-for 
giving  love  toward  all;  and  Herder  answers  that  it  is  rea 
son,  Keats  that  it  is  beauty,  Goethe  that  it  is  liberty,  and 
Hugo  that  it  is  immense  triumphant  toil;^>and  each  in 
giving  his  answer  tells  the  story  of  the  old  gods  and  the 
younger  gods,  and  the  wise  Titan  who  knew  yet  other 
gods  that  should  come.  And  the  race  listens  to  these 
tales  because  it  hears  in  them  its  own  voice  speaking. 
Men  of  genius  are  men,  like  other  men;  but  their  genius, 
if  I  may  use  an  obvious  comparison,  is  like  the  reflector 
in  front  of  the  light-house  flame  —  in  all  directions  but 
one  it  is  a  common  flame,  but  in  that  one  direction  along 
which  the  reflector  magnifies,  glorifies  and  speeds  its 
radiance,  it  is  the  shining  of  a  great  light.  Look  at 
men  of  genius,  as  you  find  them  in  biography,  and  they 
seem  ordinary  persons  of  daily  affairs;  but  if  you  can 
catch  sight  of  genius  through  that  side  which  is  turned 
out  to  the  infinite  as  to  a  great  ocean,  you  will  see,  I  will 
not  say  the  man  himself,  but  the  use  God  makes  of  the 
man.  That  use  is  to  reveal  ourselves  to  ourselves,  to 


THE   TITAN    MYTH  81 

show  what  human  nature  is  and  can  do,  to  unlock  our 
minds,  our  hearts,  all  our  energies,  for  use.  We  admire 
and  love  such  men  because  they  are  more  ourselves  than 
we  are,  the  undeveloped,  often  unknown  selves  that  in  us 
are  but  partially  born.  "What  is  most  divine  in  me?" 
is  the  question  the  race  puts;  and  perhaps  it  is  true 
(though  the  statement  may  be  startling),  that  as  soon 
as  man  discovers  a  god  in  himself,  all  external  gods  fall 
from  their  thrones  —  and  this  is  the  meaning  of  the 
myth.  But  again,  what  is  this  but  the  old  verse  — 

"The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  within  you?" 

That  realized,  the  old  gods  may  go  their  ways.  It  is 
realized,  perhaps,  for  one  of  its  modes,  in  this  way: 
that  as  the  being  of  beauty  is  entire  and  perfect  in 
the  grass  that  flourishes  for  a  summer,  or  in  the  rose 
of  dawn  that  fades  even  while  it  blossoms,  so  the  power 
of  moral  ideas  enters,  entire  and  perfect,  into  our  being, 
and,  as  I  said,  the  humblest  of  men  suffering  for  man's 
good  as  he  conceives  it  shares  in  the  moral  sublimity 
of  Prometheus.  What  is  thus  within  man  —  the  thing 
that  is  most  divine  —  is  certainly  the  medium  by  which 
man  approaches  the  divinity,  and  through  which  he 
beholds  it,  in  any  living  way.  It  belongs  to  Puritanism, 
as  a  mood  of  mind,  to  be  impatient  of  any  external 
thing  between  the  soul  and  the  divinity;  it  will  have 
the  least  of  any  such  material  element  in  its  spiritual 
sight  and  communion;  it  sees  God  by  an  inner  vision. 
Mediums  of  some  sort  there  must  be  between  human 
nature  and  its  idea  of  the  divine;  and  it  seems  to  me 
that  our  inner  vision  by  which  the  Puritan  spirit  reaches 
outward  and  upward  is  the  vision  of  imagination  trans 
figuring  history  to  saints  and  martyrs  in  their  holy  living 


82  THE   TORCH 

and  holy  dying,  transfiguring  all  human  experience  to  the 
idealities  of  poetry.  Mankind  seeing  itself  more  per 
fect  in  St.  Francis,  in  Philip  Sidney,  in  all  men  of  spir 
itual  genius,  makes  them  a  part  of  this  inner  vision  — 
and,  rank  over  rank,  above  them  the  perfection  of 
Arthur  and  Parsifal,  and  still  more  high  the  perfection 
of  reason,  beauty,  and  love  in  their  element.  In  this 
hierarchy  of  human  daring,  dreaming,  desiring  is  the 
only  beatific  vision  that  human  eyes  ever  immediately 
beheld  —  the  vision  of  what  is  most  divine  in  man. 
What  I  maintain  is  that,  humanly  speaking,  in  the  search 
for  God  one  path  by  which  the  race  moves  on  is  through 
this  inner  vision  of  ideal  perfections  in  its  own  nature 
and  its  own  experience,  which  it  has  fixed  and  illuminated 
in  these  imaginative  figures,  these  race-images  of  race- 
ideas. 


V 

SPENSER 

THE  general  principle  which  I  have  endeavored  to  set 
forth  in  the  first  four  lectures  is  that  mankind  in  the 
process  of  civilization  stores  up  race-power,  in  one  or  an 
other  form,  so  that  it  is  a  continually  growing  fund;  and 
that  literature,  pre-eminently,  is  such  a  store  of  spiritual 
race-power,  derived  originally  from  the  historical  life  or 
from  the  general  experience  of  men,  and  transformed  by 
imagination  so  that  all  which  is  not  necessary  falls  away 
from  it  and  what  is  left  is  truth  in  its  simplest,  most  vivid 
and  vital  form.  Thus  I  instanced  mythology,  chivalry, 
and  the  Scriptures  as  three  such  sifted  deposits  of  the 
past;  and  I  illustrated  the  use  poetry  makes  of  such  race- 
images  and  race-ideas  by  the  example  of  the  myth  of  the 
Titans.  In  the  remaining  four  lectures  I  desire  to  ap 
proach  the  same  general  principle  of  the  storing  of  race- 
power  from  the  starting-point  of  the  individual  author 
—  to  set  forth  Spenser,  Milton,  Wordsworth  and  Shelley, 
not  in  their  personality  but  as  race-exponents,  and 
to  show  that  their  essential  greatness  and  value  are  due 
to  the  degree  in  which  they  availed  themselves  of  the 
race-store.  You  may  remember  that  I  defined  education 
for  all  men  as  the  process  of  identifying  oneself  with  the 
race-mind,  entering  into  and  taking  possession  of  the 
race-store;  and  the  rule  is  the  same  for  men  of  genius  as 
for  other  men.  You  find,  consequently,  that  the  greatest 
poets  have  always  been  the  best  scholars  of  their  times 

83 


84  THE    TORCH 

—  not  in  the  encyclopedic  sense  that  they  knew  every 
thing,  but  in  the  sense  that  they  possessed  the  living 
knowledge  of  their  age,  so  far  as  it  concerns  the  human 
soul  in  its  history.    They  have  always  possessed  what  is 
called  the  academic  mind  —  that  is,  they  had  a  strong 
grasp  on  literary  tradition  and  the  great  thoughts  of 
mankind,  and  the  great  forms  which  those  thoughts  had 
taken  on  in  the  historic  imagination.    Virgil  is  a  striking 
example  of  such  a  poet,  perfectly  cultivated  in  all  the  ar 
tistic,  philosophic,   literary   tradition  as  it  then  was: 
Dante  and  Chaucer  are  similar  instances;  and,  in  Eng 
lish,  Spenser,  Milton,  Gray,  Shelley  and  Tennyson  con 
tinue  the  line  of  those  poets  in  whom  scholarship  —  the 
academic  tradition  —  is  an  essential  element  in  their 
worth.     It  ought  not  to  be  necessary  to  bring  this  out  so 
clearly;  for  it  is  obvious  that  men  of  genius,  in  the  proc 
ess  of  absorbing  the  race-store,  by  the  very  fact  become 
scholarly  men,  men  of  intellectual  culture,  though  in 
consequence  of  their  genius  they  neglect  all  culture  ex 
cept  that  which  still  has  spiritual  life  in  it.    This  is  so 
elementary  a  truth  in  literature  that  the  index  to  the  im 
portance  of  an  author  is  often  his  representative  power 

—  the  degree  to  which  he  sums  up  and  delivers  the  hu 
man  past.    How  large  a  tract  of  time,  what  extent  of 
knowledge,  what  range  of  historical  emotion  —  does  his 
mind  drain?     These  are  initial  questions.    And  in  lite 
rary  history,  you  know,  there  are  here  and  there  minds, 
so  central  to  the  period,  such  meeting  points  of  different 
ages  and  cultures,  that  they  resemble  those  junctions  on 
a  railway  map  which  seem  to  absorb  all  geography  into 
their  own  black  dots.    The  greatest  poets  are  just  such 
centers  of  spiritual  history;  where  ancient  and  modern 
meet,  where  classicism  and  medievalism,   Christianity 


SPENSER  85 

and  paganism,  Renaissance  and  Reformation  and  Rev 
olution  meet  —  there  is  the  focus,  for  the  time  being,  of 
the  soul  of  man;  and  it  is  at  that  point  that  genius  devel 
ops  its  transcendent  power. 

Spenser  was  such  a  mind.  I  spoke  in  the  first  lecture 
of  that  law  of  progress  which  involves  the  passing  away 
of  a  civilization  at  the  moment  of  its  perfection  and  the 
death  of  that  breed  of  men  who  have  brought  it  to  its 
height.  Spenser  was  the  poet  of  a  dying  race  and  a  dying 
culture;  in  his  work  there  is  reflected  and  embodied  a 
climax  in  the  spiritual  life  of  humanity  to  which  imagi 
nation  gives  form,  beauty,  and  passion.  In  this  respect 
I  am  always  reminded  of  Virgil  when  I  read  him;  for 
Virgil  used,  like  Spenser,  the  romanticism  of  a  receding 
past  to  express  his  sense  of  human  life,  and  he  was  re 
lated  to  his  materials  in  much  the  same  way.  The  Myth 
of  Arthur  lay  behind  Spenser  as  the  Myth  of  Troy  lay 
behind  Virgil  in  the  mist  of  his  country's  origins;  the 
Italians  of  the  Renaissance,  Ariosto,  and  Tasso,  were  a 
school  for  Spenser  much  as  the  Alexandian  poets  had 
been  for  Virgil ;  and  as  in  Virgil  mythology  and  Homeric 
heroism  and  the  legend  of  the  antique  Italian  land  be 
fore  Rome  blended  in  one,  and  became  the  last  flower 
ing  of  the  pre-Christian  world  in  what  is,  perhaps,  the 
greatest  of  all  world-poems,  the  "^Eneid,"  so  in  Spenser 
chivalry,  medievalism  and  the  new  birth  of  learning  in 
Europe  blended,  and  gave  us  a  world-poem  of  the  Chris 
tian  soul,  in  which  medieval  spirituality  —  as  it  seems 
to  me  —  expired.  Spenser  resembled  Virgil,  too,  in  his 
moment;  he  was  endeavoring  to  create  for  England  a 
poem  such  as  Italy  possessed  in  Ariosto's  and  Tasso's 
epics,  to  introduce  into  his  country's  literature  the  most 
supreme  poetic  art  then  in  the  world,  just  as  Virgil 


86  THE   TORCH 

was  attempting  to  instill  into  the  Roman  genius  the  im 
aginative  art  of  Greece.  He  resembled  Virgil  again  in 
his  poetic  education  inasmuch  as  he  formed  his  powers 
and  first  exercised  them  in  pastoral  verse,  in  the 
"Shepheard's  Calendar"  as  Virgil  did  in  his  "Eclogues"; 
and  he  resembled  Virgil  still  more  importantly  in  that 
his  theme  was  the  greatest  known  to  him  —  namely, 
the  empire  of  the  soul,  as  Virgil's  was  the  empire  of 
Rome.  Spenser,  then,  when  he  came  to  his  work  is 
to  be  looked  on  as  a  master  of  all  literary  learning,  a 
pioneer  and  planter  of  poetic  art  in  his  own  country, 
and  a  poet  who  used  the  world  of  the  receding  past  as 
his  means  of  expressing  what  was  most  real  to  him  in 
human  life. 

The  work  by  which  he  is  remembered  is  "The  Faerie 
Queene,"  and  in  it  all  that  I  have  said  meets  you  at  the 
threshold.  Perhaps  the  first,  and  certainly  the  abiding 
impression  the  poem  makes,  is  of  its  remoteness  from 
life.  Remoteness,  you  know,  is  said  to  be  a  necessary 
element  in  any  artistic  effect  —  such  as  you  feel  in  look 
ing  at  Greek  statues  or  Italian  Madonnas  or  French 
landscapes.  This  remoteness  of  the  artistic  world  the 
poem  has,  in  large  measure:  its  country  is  no  physical 
region  known  to  geography,  but  is  that  land  of  the  plain 
where  Knights  are  always  pricking,  of  forests  and 
streams  and  hills  that  have  no  element  of  composition, 
and  especially  of  a  horizon  like  the  sea's,  usually  lonely, 
but  where  anything  may  appear  at  any  time:  it  is  a 
land  like  a  dream;  and  what  takes  place  there  at  any 
moment  is  pictorial,  and  can  be  painted.  But  the  quality 
of  remoteness,  so  noticeable  in  the  poem  and  to  which  I 
refer,  is  not  that  of  artistic  atmosphere  and  setting.  It 
arises  largely  from  the  remoteness  of  history  in  the  poem, 


SPENSER  87 

felt  in  the  constant  presence  of  outworn  things,  of  by 
gone  characters,  ways  and  incidents;  and  the  im 
pression  of  intricacy  that  the  poem  also  makes  at  first, 
the  sense  of  confusion  in  it,  is  partly  due  to  this  same 
presence  of  the  unfamiliar  in  most  heterogeneous  variety. 
This  miscellaneousness  is  the  result  of  Spenser's  com 
prehensive  inclusion  in  the  poem  of  all  he  knew,  that  is, 
of  the  entire  literary  tradition  of  the  race  within  his 
ken.  Thus  you  find,  at  the  outset,  Aristotle's  scheme  of 
the  moral  virtues,  and  Plato's  doctrine  of  the  unity  of 
beauty  and  wisdom,  on  the  philosophical  side;  and  for 
imagery  out  of  the  classics,  here  are  Pluto,  Proserpina, 
and  Night,  the  house  of  Morpheus,  the  bleeding  tree, 
the  cloud  that  envelops  the  fallen  warrior  and  allows 
him  to  escape,  the  journey  in  Hades,  the  story  of  Hip- 
polytus,  and  fauns,  satyrs  and  other  minor  mythologi 
cal  beings.  You  find,  also,  out  of  medieval  things,  the 
method  of  the  poem  which  is  the  characteristic  medieval 
method  of  allegory,  and  in  imagery  dragons,  giants, 
dwarfs,  the  hermit,  the  magician,  the  dungeon,  the  wood 
of  error,  the  dream  of  Arthur,  the  holy  wells,  the  Sara 
cen  Knights,  the  House  of  Pride,  the  House  of  Holi 
ness,  and  many  more;  and,  in  these  lists,  I  have  cited 
instances  only  from  the  first  of  the  six  books.  A  similar 
rich  variety  of  matter  is  to  be  found,  consisting  of  the 
characteristic  belongings  of  Renaissance  fable.  This 
multiplicity  of  imaginative  detail,  being  as  it  is  a  sum 
mary  of  all  the  poetical  knowledge  of  previous  time,  is 
perplexing  to  a  reader  unfamiliar  with  the  literature 
before  Spenser,  and  makes  the  poem  seem  really,  and  not 
merely  artistically  remote.  Here  appears  most  clearly 
the  fact  which  I  emphasize,  that  the  "Faerie  Queene"  de 
picts  and  contains  a  receding  world,  a  dying  culture;  for 


88  THE   TORCH 

it  is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  to  Spenser  and  his  early 
readers  these  things  were  not  then  so  remote;  medieval-/ 
ism  was  as  near  to  him  as  Puritanism  is  to  us,  and  the 
thoughts,  methods,  aims,  language  and  imagery  of  the 
Renaissance  as  near  as  the  Revolution  is  to  us.  In  that 
age,  too,  chivalry  yet  lingered,  at  least  as  a  spectacle, 
and  other  materials  in  the  poem  that  now  seem  to  us 
like  stage-machinery  were  part  and  parcel  of  real  life. 
The  tourney  was  still  a  game  of  splendid  pleasure  and 
display  at  the  Court  of  Elizabeth;  the  masque-proces 
sion,  so  constant  in  one  or  another  form  in  the  poem,  was 
a  fashion  of  Christmas  mummery,  of  the  Court  Masque, 
and  of  city  processions;  the  physical  aspect  and  furni 
ture  of  the  poem  were,  thus,  not  wholly  antiquated;  and 
on  the  side  of  character,  it  is  easy  to  read  between  the 
lines  the  presence  of  Spenser's  own  noble  friends  —  and 
no  one  in  that  age  was  richer  in  noble  friendship  —  the 
presence,  I  mean,  of  the  just  Lord  Grey,  the  adventurous 
Raleigh,  and  the  high-spirited  Philip  Sidney.  The  ele 
ment  of  historical  remoteness  must,  therefore,  be  thought 
of  as  originally  much  less  strong  than  now,  and  one  which 
the  passage  of  time  has  imported  into  the  poem  very 
largely. 

We  are,  perhaps,  too  apt  to  think  that  our  own  age  is 
one  in  which  great  heterogenousness  of  knowledge,  of 
thought  and  principle  and  faith,  is  a  distinctive  trait; 
but  we  are  not  the  first  to  find  our  race-inheritance  a 
confusion  of  riches,  and  a  tentative  eclecticism  the  best 
we  can  compass  in  getting  a  philosophy  of  our  own. 
Every  learned  and  open  mind,  in  the  times  of  the  flowing 
together  of  the  world's  ideas,  has  the  same  experience. 
Spenser,  being  a  receptive  mind  and  standing  at  the 
center  of  the  ideas  of  the  world  then,  was  necessarily 


SPENSER  89 

overwhelmed  with  the  variety  of  his  knowledge;  but  he 
faced  the  same  problem  that  Milton,  Gray,  Shelley,  and 
Tennyson  in  their  time  met;  the  problem  of  how  to  re 
duce  this  miscellaneousness  of  matter  to  some  order,  to 
reconcile  it  with  his  own  mind,  to  build  up  out  of  it  his 
own  world.  It  is  the  same  problem  that  confronts  each 
one  of  us,  in  education;  in  the  presence  of  this  race- 
inheritance,  so  vast,  so  apparently  contradictory  and 
diverse  —  how  to  take  possession  of  it,  to  make  it  ours 
vitally,  to  have  it  enter  into  and  take  possession  of  us. 
Spenser  is  an  admirable  example  of  this  situation,  for  in 
his  poem  the  opposition  between  the  race-mind  and  the 
individual  is  clearly  brought  out  in  the  point  that  he  con 
verges  all  this  imagery,  knowledge  and  method  in  order 
to  set  forth  the  individual's  life.  Spenser  states  his 
purpose  in  the  preface:  "The  general  end,"  he  says,  "of 
all  the  Book  is  to  fashion  a  gentleman,  or  noble  person, 
in  vertuous  and  gentle  discipline."  It  is  the  very 
problem  before  each  of  us  in  education:  "to  fashion  a 
gentleman."  Spenser's  plan,  in  portraying  how  this  is 
to  be  done,  is  a  very  simple  one.  By  a  gentleman  he 
means  a  man  of  Christian  virtue,  perfected  in  all  the 
graces  and  the  powers  of  human  nature.  The  educa 
tion  required  is  an  education  in  the  development  of  the 
virtues,  as  he  named  them  —  Holiness,  Temperance, 
Chastity,  Friendship,  Justice,  Courtesy;  he  illustrates 
the  development  of  each  virtue,  one  in  each  Knight,  and 
sends  each  Knight  forth  on  an  adventure  in  the  course 
of  which  the  Knight  meets  and  overcomes  the  character 
istic  temptations  of  the  virtue  which  he  embodies. 
This  was  the  plan  of  the  poem,  which,  however,  the  poet 
found  it  easier  to  formulate  than  to  follow  with  precision. 
The  main  fact  stands  out,  however,  that  Spenser  used 


90  THE   TORCH 

all  his  resources  of  knowledge  and  art,  miscellaneous 
as  they  were,  for  the  single  purpose  of  showing  how  the 
soul  comes  to  moral  perfection  in  the  Christian  world. 
You  see  there  is  nothing  contemporary  or  remote  or 
by-gone  in  the  problem:  that  is  universal  and  unchang 
ing;  but  in  answering  it  Spenser  used  an  imaginative 
language  that  to  many  of  us  is  like  a  lost  tongue.  Shall 
we,  then,  let  the  allegory  go,  as  Lowell  advised,  content 
that  it  does  not  bite  us,  as  he  says?  I  cannot  bring 
myself  to  second  that  advice.  Though  I  am  as  fond 
of  the  idols  of  poetry  for  their  own  sake  as  any  one,  yet 
I  have  room  for  idols  of  morality  and  philosophy  also 
—  let  us  have  as  many  idols  as  we  can  get,  is  my  way: 
and  to  leave  out  of  our  serious-minded  Spenser  what  was 
to  the  poet  himself  the  core  of  his  meaning  —  its  spir 
ituality —  is  too  violent  a  measure,  and  bespeaks  such 
desperate  dullness  in  the  allegory  as  I  do  not  find  in  it. 
To  read  the  poem  for  the  beauty  of  its  surface,  and  to 
let  the  noble  substance  go,  is,  at  all  events,  not  the  way 
to  understand  it  as  a  focus  of  race-elements  and  a  store 
of  race-power,  as  a  poem  not  of  momentary  delight,  but 
of  historical  phases  of  knowledge,  culture  and  aspira 
tion,  a  poem  of  the  thoughtful  human  spirit  brooding 
over  its  long  inheritance  of  beauty,  honor,  and  virtue. 

Of  course,  I  cannot  in  an  hour  convey  much  of  an 
idea  of  so  great  a  poem,  so  various  in  its  loveliness,  so 
profound  in  significance,  so  diversified  in  merely  literary 
interest.  I  shall  make  no  attempt  to  tell  its  picturesque 
and  wandering  story,  to  describe  its  characters,  or  to  ex 
plain  what  marvelous  lives  they  led  in  that  old  world  of 
romance.  But  I  shall  try  to  show,  in  general  terms,  cer 
tain  aspects  of  it  as  a  poem  that  presents  life  in  a  uni 
versal,  vital,  and  never-to-be-antiquated  way,  such  as  it 


SPENSER  91 

seemed  to  one  of  the  most  noble-natured  of  English 
men,  in  a  great  age  of  human  effort,  thought  and  ac 
complishment. 

Among  the  primary  images  under  which  life  has  been 
figured,  none  is  more  universal  and  constant  than  that 
into  which  the  idea  of  travel  enters.  To  all  men  at  all 
times  life  has  been  a  voyage,  a  pilgrimage,  a  quest. 
Spenser  conceived  of  it  as  the  quest,  the  peculiar  image 
of  chivalry,  but  not  as  the  quest  for  the  Grail  or  any 
other  shadowy  symbol  on  the  attainment  of  which  the 
quest  was  ended  in  a  mystic  solution.  The  quest  of  his 
Knights  is  for  self-mastery;  and  it  is  achieved  at  each 
forward  step  of  the  journey.  You  remember  that  in  the 
lecture  on  Prometheus  I  illustrated  the  way  in  which 
man  takes  a  certain  part  of  his  nature  —  the  evil  prin 
ciple  —  and  places  it  outside  of  himself,  calls  it  Mephis- 
topheles,  and  so  deals  with  it  artistically;  in  Spenser,  the 
temptation  which  each  Knight  is  under  is  his  worser 
self,  as  we  say,  so  taken  and  placed  outside  as  his  enemy 
whom  he  overcomes;  thus,  Guyon,  the  Knight  of  Tem 
perance,  overcomes  the  various  forms  of  anger,  of 
avarice,  and  of  voluptuousness,  which  are  merely,  in 
fact,  his  other  and  worser  selves;  in  each  victory  he 
gathers  strength  for  the  next  encounter,  and  so  ends 
perfecting  himself  in  that  virtue.  Life  —  that  is  to  say, 
the  quest  —  has  a  goal  in  self-mastery,  that  is  progres 
sively  reached  by  the  Knight  at  each  new  stage  of  his 
struggle.  The  atmosphere  of  life  —  so  conceived  as  a 
spiritual  warfare  —  is  broadly  rendered;  it  is,  for  ex 
ample,  always  a  thing  of  danger,  and  this  element  is 
given  through  the  changing  incident,  the  deceits  prac 
tised  on  the  Knights,  the  troubles  they  fall  into,  often 
unwittingly,  and  undeservedly,  their  constant  need  to  be 


92  THE   TORCH 

vigilant  and  to  receive  succor.  The  secret,  the  false,  the 
insidious,  are  as  often  present  as  is  the  warfare  of  the 
open  foe.  Again,  this  life  is  a  thing  of  mystery.  How 
ever  clear  we  may  try  to  make  life,  however  positive  in 
mind  we  are  and  armed  against  illusions,  it  still  remains 
true  that  mystery  envelops  life.  I  do  not  mean  the 
mystery  of  thought,  of  the  unknown,  but  the  mystery  of 
life  itself.  Spenser  conceives  this  mystery  as  the  action, 
friendly  or  inimical,  of  a  spiritual  world  round  about 
man,  a  supernatural  world;  and  he  renders  it  by  means 
of  enchantment.  I  dare  say  that  to  most  readers  the 
presence  of  enchantment,  both  evil  and  good,  is  a  hin 
drance  to  the  appreciation  of  the  poem  and  impairs  its 
reality  to  their  minds.  Arthur,  you  know,  has  a  veiled 
shield;  but  its  bared  radiance  will  overthrow  of  itself  any 
foe.  This  seems  like  an  unfair  advantage,  and  takes 
interest  from  the  poem.  Such  enchanted  weapons  may 
be  regarded  as  symbolic  of  the  higher  nature  of  the  cause 
in  which  they  are  employed,  of  its  inward  power,  and 
possibly  of  the  true  powers  of  the  heroes,  their  spiritual 
force,  and  it  may  be  that  this  emphasis  on  the  spirituality 
of  their  force  is  the  true  reason  for  the  introduction  of 
the  symbol;  for  these  are  not  only  Knights  human,  but 
Knights  Christian  and  clothed  with  a  might  which  is  not 
of  this  world.  Such  an  explanation,  though  plausible, 
seems  mechanical;  the  truth  which  it  contains  is  that  the 
enchanted  arms  do  not  denote  a  higher  degree  of  physi 
cal  strength,  as  if  the  Knights  had  rifles  instead  of 
spears,  but  a  difference  of  spiritual  power.  It  is,  how 
ever,  much  more  clear  that  by  the  realm  of  enchantment 
in  the  poem  is  figured  the  interest  which  the  supernatural 
world  takes  in  man's  conflict  —  the  medieval  idea  that 
God  and  his  angels  are  on  one  side  and  the  devil  and 


SPENSER  93 

his  angels  are  on  the  other;  and  the  presence  of  en 
chantment  in  the  poem  is  a  means  of  expressing  this 
belief.  The  reality  of  divine  aid  against  devilish  mach 
ination  is  thus  symbolized;  but  in  one  particular  this 
aid  is  so  important  a  matter  that  Spenser  introduces  it 
in  a  more  essential  and,  in  fact,  in  a  human  way.  To 
Spenser's  mind,  no  man  could  save  himself,  or  perfect 
himself  in  virtue  even,  without  Divine  Grace;  this  was 
the  doctrine  he  held,  and,  therefore,  he  made  Arthur  the 
special  representative  and  instrument  of  Grace,  and  at 
each  point  of  the  story  where  the  Knight  cannot  retrieve 
himself  from  the  danger  into  which  he  had  fallen,  Arthur 
appears  with  his  glorious  arms  for  the  rescue.  The  pres 
ence  of  mystery  in  life,  too,  is  not  only  thus  felt  in  the 
atmosphere  of  enchantment  and  in  the  signal  acts  of  res 
cue  by  Arthur,  but  it  also  envelops  the  cardinal  ab 
stract  ideas  of  the  poem  —  such  ideas,  I  mean,  as  wis 
dom  in  Una,  and  as  chastity  in  Britomart,  to  whose 
beauty  (which  is,  of  course,  the  imaging  forth  of  the 
special  virtue  of  each)  is  ascribed  a  miraculous  power  of 
mastery,  as  in  Una's  case  over  the  Lion  and  the  foresters, 
and  in  Britomart's  case  over  Artegal. 

"And  he  himselfe  long  gazing  there  upon, 

At  last  fell  humbly  downe  upon  his  knee, 
And  of  his  wonder  made  religion, 
Weening  some  heavenly  goddesse  he  did  see." 

This  is  that  radiance  which  Plato  first  saw  in  the  counte 
nance  of  Truth,  such  that,  he  said,  were  Truth  to  come 
among  men  unveiled  in  her  own  form,  all  men  would 
worship  her.  So  Spenser,  learning  from  Plato,  presents 
the  essential  loveliness  of  all  virtue  as  having  inherent 
power  to  overcome  —  precisely,  you  will  remember,  as 


94  THE   TORCH 

Keats  describes  the  principle  of  beauty  in  "Hyperion" 
as  inherently  victorious. 

The  idea  of  life  as  a  quest,  with  an  atmosphere  of 
danger  and  mystery,  and  presided  over  by  great  princi 
ples  such  as  wisdom,  grace,  chastity,  so  clad  in  loveliness 
to  the  moral  sense  that  they  seem  like  secondary  forms 
of  Divine  being  —  these  are  fundamental  conceptions 
in  the  poem,  its  roots,  so  to  speak,  and  they  belong  in 
the  ethical  sphere.  But  Spenser  was  the  most  poetically ; 
minded  of  all  English  poets;  he  not  only  knew  that 
however  true  and  exalted  his  ideas  of  life  might  be,  they 
must  come  forth  from  his  mind  as  images,  but  he  also  by 
nature  loved  truth  in  the  image  more  than  in  the  ab 
stract;  and  he  therefore  approached  truth  through  the 
imagination  rather  than  through  the  intellect.  That  is  to 
say,  he  was  a  poet,  first  and  foremost;  and  wove  his 
poem  of  sensuous  effects.  Sensibility  to  all  things  of 
sense  was  his  primary  endowment;  he  was  a  lover  of 
beauty,  of  joy,  and  his  joy  in  beauty  reached  such  a  pitch 
that  he  excels  all  English  poets  in  a  certain  artistic 
voluptuousness  of  nature,  which  was  less  rich  in  Milton 
and  less  pure  in  Keats,  who  alone  are  to  be  compared 
with  him,  as  poets  of  sensuous  endowment.  It  is  seldom 
that  the  artistic  nature  appears  in  the  English  race;  it 
belongs  rather  to  the  southern  peoples,  and  especially  to 
Italy;  but  when  it  does  arise  in  the  English  genius,  and 
blends  happily  there  with  the  high  moral  spirit  which 
is  a  more  constant  English  trait  —  especially  when  it 
blends  with  the  Puritan  strain,  it  seems  as  if  the  young 
Plato  had  been  born  again.  Both  Milton  and  Spenser 
were  Puritans  who  were  lovers  of  beauty;  and  Spenser 
showed  Milton  that  way  of  grace.  No  language  can 
exaggerate  the  extent  to  which  Spenser  was  permeated 


SPENSER  95 

with  this  sensuousness  of  temperament,  and  he  created 
the  body  of  his  poem  out  of  it  —  the  color,  the  picture, 
the  incident,  figures  and  places,  the  atmosphere,  the  ca 
dence  and  the  melody  of  it.  You  feel  this  bodily  delight 
in  the  very  fall  of  the  lines,  interlacing  and  sinuous,  with 
Italian  softness,  smoothness,  and  slide.  You  feel  it  in 
his  love  of  gardens  and  streams;  in  his  love  of  pictured 
walls,  and  all  the  characteristic  adornments  of  Renais 
sance  art;  in  his  grouping  of  human  figures  in  the  various 
forms  of  the  masque;  in  his  descriptions  of  wealth  and 
luxury,  of  the  bower  of  bliss,  of  the  scenes  of  mythology; 
in  every  part  of  the  poem  the  flowing  of  this  fount  of 
beauty  is  the  one  unfailing  thing.  It  came  to  him  from 
the  Italian  Renaissance,  of  course.  It  is  the  Renaissance 
element  in  the  poem;  and  with  it  all  the  other  elements 
are  suffused. 

The  worship  of  beauty,  as  it  was  known  in  all  objects 
of  art,  and  in  all  poetry  which  had  formed  itself,  in  de 
scription  and  motive,  on  objects  of  art,  was  perhaps  its 
center;  but,  in  Spenser,  it  exceeded  such  bounds,  and, 
though  taken  from  the  Renaissance,  it  was  given  a  new 
career  in  Puritanism.  For  the  singular  thing  about  this 
sensuous  sensibility  in  Spenser,  this  artistic  voluptuous 
ness  in  the  sight  and  presence  of  beauty,  is  that  it  re 
mained  pure  in  spirit.  In  Renaissance  poetry,  using  the 
same  chivalric  tradition  as  Spenser,  this  spirit  has  ended 
in  Ariosto's  "Orlando"  —  a  poem  of  cynicism,  as  it  seems 
to  me.  It  is  to  the  honor  of  the  moral  genius  of  the 
English  that  the  Renaissance  spirit  in  poetry,  in  their 
tongue,  issued  in  so  nobly  different  a  poem  as  "The  Faerie 
Queene."  This  was  because,  as  I  say,  the  Renaissance 
worship  of  beauty  was  given  a  new  career  by  Spenser 
in  Puritanism.  Perhaps  I  can  best  illustrate  the  matter 


g6  THE   TORCH 

by  bringing  forward  what  was  one  of  Spenser's  noblest 
points.  He  raised  this  worship  of  beauty  to  the  highest 
point  of  ideality  by  having  recourse  to  the  tradition  of 
chivalry  in  its  worship  of  woman,  and  blended  the  two 
in  a  new  worship  of  womanhood.  I  think  it  will  be 
agreed  that,  although  Spenser's  romance  is  primarily 
one  of  the  adventures  of  men,  it  is  his  female  characters 
that  live  most  vividly  in  the  memory  of  the  reader. 
These  characters  are,  indeed,  very  simple  and  elementary 
ones;  they  are  not  elaborated  on  the  scale  to  which  the 
novel  has  accustomed  our  minds;  but  they  are  of  the 
same  kind,  it  seems  to  me,  as  Shakespeare's  equally 
simple  types  of  womanhood  —  such  as  Cordelia,  Imogen, 
Miranda  —  of  which  they  were  prophetic.  What  I  de 
sire  to  bring  out,  however,  is  not  their  simplicity,  but 
the  fact  that  they  enter  the  poem  to  ennoble  it,  to 
raise  it  in  spiritual  power,  and  to  strengthen  the  heroes 
in  their  struggles.  In  this  respect,  as  I  think,  Spenser 
did  a  new  thing.  In  the  epic,  generally,  woman  comes 
on  the  scene  only  to  impair  the  moral  quality  and  the 
manly  actions  of  the  hero:  such  was  Dido,  you  remem 
ber,  in  the  ".Eneid,"  and  Eve  in  "Paradise  Lost/'  and  the 
same  story,  with  slight  qualifications  holds  of  other  epic 
poems.  It  is  a  high  distinction  that  in  Spenser  woman 
hood  is  presented,  not  as  the  source  of  evil,  its  presence 
and  its  temptation,  but  as  the  inspiration  of  life  for  such 
Knights  as  Artegal,  the  Red-Cross  Knight,  and  others; 
and,  furthermore,  the  worship  of  beauty,  which  they 
found  in  the  worship  of  womanhood,  is  in  Spenser  hardly 
to  be  distinguished  from  the  worship  of  those  principles, 
which  I  have  described  as  secondary  forms  of  Divine 
being  —  the  principles  of  wisdom,  chastity  and  the  like. 
I  find  in  these  idealities  of  womanhood  the  highest  reach 


SPENSER  97 

•*  *• 

of  the  poem,  and  in  them  blend  harmoniously  the  chival- 
ric,  artistic  and  moral  elements  of  Spenser's  mind.  And 
as  we  feel  in  Spenser's  men  the  near  presence  of  such 
friends  as  Lord  Grey,  Raleigh  and  Sidney,  it  is  not 
fanciful  to  feel  here  the  neighborhood  of  Elizabethan 
women  —  such  as  she  of  whom  Jonson  wrote  the  great 
epitaph: 

"Underneath  this  sable  hearse 
Lies  the  subject  of  all  verse; 
Sidney's  sister,  Pembroke's  mother. 
Death,  ere  thou  hast  slain  another 
Learned  and  fair  and  good  as  she, 
Time  shall  throw  a  dart  at  thee." 

With  this  supreme  presence  of  womanhood  in  "The 
Faerie  Queene"  goes  the  fact  that  warfare  as  such  is  a 
disappearing  element;  it  is  less  prominent,  and  it  inter 
ests  less,  than  might  be  expected.  This  is  because,  just 
as  beauty  in  all  its  forms  is  spiritualized  in  the  poem,  so 
is  war;  the  war  here  described  is  the  inner  warfare  of  the 
soul  with  itself;  it  is  all  a  symbol  of  spiritual  struggle, 
and  necessarily  it  seems  less  real  as  a  thing  of  outward 
event.  The  poem  is  one  of  thought,  essentially;  its  ac 
tion  has  to  be  interpreted  hi  terms  of  thought  before  it  is 
understood;  it  is,  in  truth,  a  contemplative  poem,  and 
its  mood  is  as  often  the  artistic  contemplation  of  beauty, 
as  the  ethical  contemplation  of  action.  These  are  the 
two  poles  on  which  the  poem  moves.  Yet  they  are 
opposed  only  in  the  analysis,  and  to  our  eyes;  in  Spenser's 
poem,  and  in  his  heart  they  were  closely  united,  for 
virtue  was  to  him  the  utmost  of  beauty,  and  its  attain 
ment  was  by  the  worship  of  beauty;  so  near,  by  certain 
aptitudes  of  emotion  towards  the  supreme  good,  did  he 


98  THE   TORCH 

come  to  Plato,  his  teacher,  and  is  therefore  to  be  fitly 
described,  in  this  regard,  as  the  disciple  of  Plato. 

I  wonder  whether,  as  I  have  been  speaking,  the  poem 
and  its  author  grow  more  or  less  remote  to  you.    Spenser 

—  this  philosophical  Platonist,  this  Renaissance  artist, 
this  Puritan  moralist  —  does  he  seem  more  or  less  cred 
ible?    Was  it  not  a  strange  thing  that  he  should  think 
that  the  abstract  development  of  a  Christian  soul,  how 
ever  picturesquely  presented,  was  an  important  theme  of 
poetry?    Yet  it  is  true,  that  the  most  purely  poetical  of 
English  poets,  and  one  of  the  most  cultivated  minds  of 
Europe  in  his  time,  had  this  idea;  and  in  Elizabeth's 
reign  —  that  is,  in  a  period  of  worldly  and  masculine  ac 
tivity,  of  immense  vigor,  in  the  very  dawn  and  sun 
burst  of  an  England  to  which  our  American  imperial 
dream  is  but  a  toy  of  fancy  —  in  that  Elizabethan,  that 
Shakespearian  age,  Spenser  chose  as  the  theme  of  highest 
moment  the  formation  of  a  Christian  character.    I  have 
spoken  of  the  artistic  remoteness  of  his  poem,  and  of  the 
remoteness  of  his  literary  tradition,  its  classical,  me 
dieval  and  Renaissance  matter  and  method;  but  there  is 
a  third  remoteness  by  which  it  seems  yet  more  distant  — 
the  remoteness  of  its  spirituality.    In  the  days  about  and 
before  Spenser  there  was  great  interest  in  the  question 
of  character  in  the  upper  classes;  what  were  the  quali 
ties  of  a  courtier  was  debated  over  and  over  in  every 
civilized  country,  and  the  books  written  about  it  are  still 
famous  books  and  worth  reading.    Spenser  took  this 
Renaissance  idea  —  what  is  the  pattern  of  manhood? 

—  and  —  just  as  in  the  case  of  the  worship  of  beauty  — 
gave  it  a  career  in  Puritanism.    The  question  became  — 
what  is  a  Christian  soul,  perfected  in  human  experience? 
What  are  its  aims,  its  means,  its  natural  history?    What 


SPENSER  99 

is  its  ideal  life  in  this  world  of  beauty,  honor,  service? 
And  this  question  he  debated  in  the  six  books  of  his 
half-completed  poem,  which  has  made  him  known  ever 
since  as  the  poet's  poet.  The  Knight  of  the  "Faerie 
Queene"  is  the  Renaissance  courtier  Christianized  —  that 
is  all.  Here  is  the  final  spiritualization  of  the  long  result 
of  chivalry  as  an  ideal  of  manly  life.  That  is  the  curious 
thing  —  that  the  result  is,  not  merely  moral,  but  spiritual. 
The  spiritual  life,  in  this  sense,  is  far  removed  from 
our  literature;  it  is  so,  because  it  is  far  removed  from  the 
general  thought  of  men.  The  struggle  men  now  think  of 
as  universal  and  typical  of  life,  is  not  the  clashing  of 
spear  and  shield  on  any  field  of  tourney,  nor  the  fencing 
of  the  soul  with  any  supernatural  foe,  seeking  its  dam 
nation:  it  is  the  mere  struggle  for  existence,  with  the 
survival  of  the  fittest  as  the  result,  a  scientific  idea,  and 
one  that  centers  attention  on  the  things  of  this  world. 
This  increases  the  sense  in  mankind  of  the  materialism 
of  human  life  and  the  importance  of  its  mortal  interests. 
Commerce  seconds  science  in  defining  this  struggle  as  a 
competition  of  trade,  a  conflict,  on  the  larger  scale,  of 
tariff  wars,  a  race  for  special  privilege  and  open  oppor 
tunity  in  new  countries.  Science  and  trade  are  almost 
as  large  a  part  of  life  now  as  righteousness  was  in  Mat 
thew  Arnold's  day:  he  reckoned  it,  I  believe,  at  three- 
quarters.  The  result  is  that  mankind  is  surrounded  with 
a  different  scheme  of  thought,  meditation  and  effort  from 
that  of  Spenser's  age.  He  was  near  the  ages  that  we 
call  the  ages  of  faith:  he  was  not  far  from  the  old  Catho 
lic  idea  of  discipline;  he  was  not  enfranchised  from  su- 
pernaturalism  in  Reformation  dogmas;  he  lived  when 
men  still  died  for  their  religion;  — all  of  which  is  to  say 
that  the  idea  of  the  spiritual  in  man's  life  and  its  im- 


ioo  THE   TORCH 

portance,  was  nigh  and  close  to  him.  In  our  literature 
there  is  much  presentation  of  moral  character,  in  the 
sense  of  the  side  that  a  man  turns  toward  his  fellow 
beings  in  society:  in  Scott,  Thackeray  and  in  Dickens, 
George  Eliot  —  to  name  the  greatest,  this  is  found;  but 
such  spiritual  character  as  Spenser  made  the  subject 
of  his  meditation  and  picturing  is  not  found.  In  the  his 
tory  of  literature,  the  hero  of  action  has  always  ended  by 
developing  into  the  saintly  ideal:  so  it  was  in  Paganism 
from  Achilles  to  ^Eneas;  so  it  was  in  medievalism  from 
Roland  and  Lancelot  to  Arthur,  Galahad  and  Parsifal; 
and  in  this  chivalric  tradition  Spenser  is  the  last  term. 
Will  our  moral  ideal,  as  it  is  now  flourishing,  show  a 
similar  course  —  has  our  literature  of  the  democratic 
movement,  now  in  its  early  stages,  the  making  of  such  a 
saint  in  it  —  that  is,  of  the  man  to  whom  God  only  is 
real  —  as  Paganism  and  medievalism  in  their  day 
evolved? 

Spenser,  then,  being  so  remote  from  us,  in  all  ways  — 
the  question  is  natural,  why  read  his  poem  at  all?  Be-  / 
cause  it  is  the  flower  of  long  ages:  because  you  command 
in  it  as  in  a  panorama  the  poetical  tradition  of  all  the 
great  imaginative  literature  in  previous  centuries,  classi 
cal,  medieval  and  Renaissance;  because  you  see  how 
Spenser,  by  his  appropriation  of  these  elements  became 
himself  the  Platonist,  the  artist,  the  moralist,  and  fused 
all  in  the  passion  for  beauty  on  earth  and  in  the  heavens 
above,  and  so  centered  his  whole  nature  toward  God;  , 
and  what  took  place  in  him  may  take  place,  according 
to  its  measure,  in  us.  For,  though  the  thoughts  of  men 
change  from  century  to  century,  and  one  guiding  prin 
ciple  yields  to  another,  and  the  ideal  life  is  built  up  in 
new  ways  in  successive  generations,  yet  the  soul's  life 


SPENSER  :'•-'- :idi 

remains,  however  cast  in  new  forms  of  the  old  passion 
for  beauty  and  virtue.  If  Spenser  be  a  poet's  poet,  as 
they  say,  let  him  appeal  to  the  poet  in  you  —  for  in 
every  man  there  is  a  poet;  let  him  appeal  in  his  own  way, 
as  a  teacher  of  the  spiritual  life;  and,  if  my  wish  might 
prevail,  let  him  come  most  home  to  you  and  receive  inti 
mate  welcome  as  the  Puritan  lover  of  beauty. 


VI 
MILTON 

MILTON  is  a  great  figure  in  our  minds.  He  is  a  very 
lonely  figure.  For  one  thing,  he  has  no  companions  of 
genius  round  him;  there  is  no  group  about  him,  in  his 
age.  Again,  he  was  a  blind  old  man,  and  there  is  some 
thing  in  blindness  that,  more  than  anything  else,  isolates 
a  man;  and  in  his  case,  by  strange  but  powerful  contrast, 
his  blindness  is  enlarged  and  glorified  by  the  fact  that 
he  saw  all  the  glory  of  the  angels  and  the  Godhead  as  no 
other  mortal  eye  ever  beheld  them,  and  the  fact  that  he 
was  blind  makes  the  vision  itself  more  credible.  And 
thirdly  he  has  impressed  himself  on  men's  memories  as 
unique  in  character;  and,  in  his  age  defeated  and  given 
o'er,  among  his  enemies  exposed  and  left,  with  the  Puri 
tan  cause  lost,  he  is  the  very  type  and  pattern  of  a  great 
spirit  in  defeat  —  imprisoned  in  his  blindness,  poor,  neg 
lected,  yet  still  faithful  and  the  master  of  his  own  integ 
rity;  for  us,  almost  as  much  as  a  poet,  he  remains  the 
intellectual  champion  of  human  liberty.  So  through  cen 
turies  there  has  slowly  formed  itself  this  lonely  figure  in 
our  minds  as  our  thought  of  Milton,  and  as  Caesar  is  a 
universal  name  of  imperial  power,  the  name  of  Milton 
has  become  a  synonym  of  moral  majesty.  But  it  was  not 
thus  that  he  was  thought  of  in  his  own  times.  There  is  no 
evidence  that  Cromwell  or  the  other  important  men  of 
the  state  knew  that  Milton  was  greater  than  they,  or  that 

103 


104  THE   TORCH 

he  was  truly  great  at  all;  to  them  he  was  pre-eminently 
a  secretary  in  the  state  department.  The  next  generation 
of  poets  —  Dryden  —  called  him  "the  old  schoolmas 
ter,"  you  remember.  In  his  earlier  years  he  appealed  to 
the  taste  of  a  few  cultivated  and  traveled  gentlemen, 
like  Sir  Henry  Wotton,  as  a  graceful  and  noble-lan- 
guaged  poet;  but  it  was  a  full  generation  after  his  death 
that  he  was  accepted  into  the  roll  of  the  great,  by  Addi- 
son  in  the  "Spectator,"  and  the  next  century  was  well  on 
its  way  before  he  was  imitated  by  new  men  as  the  Eng 
lish  model  of  blank  verse.  In  the  literary  tradition  of 
England,  however,  he  is  now  established,  and  for  all  of 
us  he  stands  apart,  a  majestic  memory,  as  I  have  said, 
touched  with  the  sublimity  of  his  subject  and  with  the 
sublimity  of  his  own  character.  There  is,  too,  in  our 
thoughts  of  him,  something  grim,  something  of  the 
sterner  aspect  of  historical  Puritanism;  the  softness  of 
Spenser,  the  softness  of  his  youth,  had  gone  out  of  him, 
and  he  had  all  the  hardness  of  man  in  him  —  he  was 
trained  down  to  the  last  ounce  —  he  was  austere.  Yet  I 
love  to  recall  his  youth  —  you  remember  the  fair  boy- 
face  of  the  first  portrait  —  a  face  of  singular  beauty;  and 
you  know  his  pink  and  white  complexion  was  such  at 
the  University  that  he  was  called  "the  Lady  of  Christ's"; 
and,  in  those  first  years  of  his  poetizing,  he  was  deep  in 
the  loveliest  verse  of  Greece  and  Italy,  in  Pindar  and 
Euripides,  in  Petrarch  and  Tasso,  as  well  as  in  Shake 
speare  and  Spenser  who  were  his  English  masters.  He  was 
a  young  humanist  —  filled  to  overflowing  with  the  new 
learning  and  its  artistic  products,  a  lover  of  them  and  of 
music,  and  of  everything  beautiful  in  nature  —  he  was 
especially  a  landscape-lover.  Even  then  the  clear  spirit 
—  the  white  soul  —  somewhat  too  unspotted  for  human 


MILTON  105 

affections  to  cling  about,  it  may  be  —  was  there;  you 
hear  it  singing  in  the  high  and  piercing  melody  of  the 
"Hymn  on  the  Morning  of  Christ's  Nativity,"  which 
happily  is  usually  a  child's  first  knowledge  of  him;  a  cer 
tain  aloofness  of  nature  he  has,  and  nowhere  do  you  find 
in  his  English  verse  —  nor  do  I  find  it  in  his  Latin  verse 
where  it  is  sometimes  thought  to  be  —  nowhere  do  you 
find  the  note  of  friendship,  of  that  companionableness 
which  is  often  so  charming  a  trait  in  the  young  lives  of 
the  poets.  But  within  his  own  reserves  —  and  perhaps 
the  more  precious  and  refined  for  that  very  reason  — 
there  was  the  same  sensuous  delight  in  the  artistic  things 
of  sense,  in  natural  beauty,  in  romantic  charm,  in  the 
lines  of  the  old  poets,  that  there  was  in  Spenser;  and  in 
this  he  was,  as  we  mark  literary  descent,  the  child  of 
Spenser,  though  of  course  his  culture  was  fed  from  other 
sources  and  in  larger  measure,  too.  For  he  was  a  better 
scholar  than  Spenser  —  his  times  allowed  him  to  be  — 
and  he  had  a  far  more  powerful  intellect.  But,  in  these 
years  of  his  milder  and  happier  youth,  when  he  was  liv 
ing  in  the  country  in  his  long  studies  —  he  was  a  student 
at  ease  till  thirty  —  and  when  he  was  traveling  in  Italy, 
he  was  in  the  true  path  of  Spenser  and  the  Renaissance, 
the  path  of  beauty,  with  faith  in  its  divine  leading.  How 
permanent  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  leading  of  beauty 
was  in  Milton's  mind  will  appear  later;  but  here  its 
early  presence  is  to  be  observed,  because  it  gives  to 
Milton  the  true  quality  and  atmosphere  of  his  lost  youth, 
and  also  marks  the  great  difference  in  tone  and  temper 
between  the  earlier  poems  —  so  golden  phrased,  so  mellif 
luous,  so  happy  —  and  the  poems  of  his  age,  the  "Para 
dise  Lost"  and  "Regained"  and  the  "Samson."  In 
"Comus,"  more  particularly  in  "L'Allegro"  and  "II 


io6  THE   TORCH 

Penseroso,"  is  the  young  Milton  —  he  that  the  fair- 
haired  boy  grew  into,  the  humanist  student,  the  writer 
of  Italian  sonnets,  the  "landscape-lover,  lord  of  lan 
guage"  —  before  Cromwell's  age  laid  its  heavy  and  man 
hood-enforcing  hand  on  the  poet  who  chose  first  to  serve 
his  country. 

But  it  is  the  poet  of  whom  I  am  to  speak;  and,  perhaps, 
before  entering  on  the  subject  of  his  verse,  it  may  be  well 
first  to  endeavor  to  mark  his  place  more  precisely  in 
English  poetry  and  to  account,  partially  at  least,  for  its 
historical  distinction.  A  poet,  so  great  as  Milton,  you 
may  be  sure,  occupies  some  point  of  vantage  in  history; 
he  embodies  some  climax  in  the  intellectual  or  artistic 
affairs  of  the  world;  and  in  Milton's  case  there  are, 
I  think,  two  historical  considerations  not  commonly 
brought  forward.  I  have  had  a  good  deal  to  say  about 
allegory.  It  was  the  characteristic  literary  form  of  the 
Middle  Ages;  and  the  substitution  of  the  direct  story  of 
human  life  in  its  place  is  one  of  the  traits  of  modern 
times.  You  remember  that  the  English  drama,  begin 
ning  from  miracle  plays  and  moralities  and  passing 
through  the  stage  of  historical  plays,  came  finally  in 
Shakespeare  to  a  representation  of  human  life  as  it  is  in 
the  most  direct  manner.  Those  of  you  who  have  seen 
the  play  of  "Everyman"  have  a  very  vivid  idea  of 
what  allegory  is  in  a  drama,  and  how  such  a  drama  differs 
from  "Romeo  and  Juliet."  In  "Everyman"  abstract 
principles  are  personified,  and  their  play  in  life  illus 
trated;  in  "Romeo  and  Juliet,"  the  passions  and  virtues 
are  in  the  form  of  character,  are  humanized  as  we  say, 
are  there  not  as  abstract  principles  but  as  human  forces. 
The  development  of  English  drama  from  an  allegorical 
mode  of  presenting  life  and  character  to  a  human  realiza- 


MILTON  107 

tion  of  them  in  men  and  women  culminated  in  Shake 
speare,  who  thus  stood  at  a  historic  moment  of  climax  in 
the  evolution  of  his  art.  Now,  you  easily  recognize  the 
likeness  of  such  an  allegorical  play  as  "Everyman"  to 
Spenser's  "Faerie  Queene,"  in  its  method  of  personifying 
the  virtues  and  the  temptations.  Religious  narrative 
poetry  remained  allegorical,  and  medieval  in  artistic 
method,  not  only  in  Spenser,  but  in  his  successors,  such 
as  the  Fletchers.  Milton  was  the  first  English  poet  to 
humanize  completely  the  characters  and  events  of  reli 
gious  story,  to  put  the  religious  scheme  and  view  of  the 
world  into  the  form  of  human  things,  and  to  expel  from 
the  work  the  abstract  allegorical  element  wholly.  Thus 
he  is  related  to  previous  narrative  religious  poetry  in 
England  precisely  as  Shakespeare  is  to  the  moralities  of 
early  drama.  He  stands  at  this  point  of  climax  in  the 
evolution  of  his  particular  branch  of  poetic  art.  Reli 
gious  poetry  was  sixty  years  later  than  dramatic  poetry  in 
reaching  this  perfect  humanization  of  its  material;  and 
thus  it  happens  that  Milton,  though  so  much  younger 
than  the  Elizabethans,  is  commonly  thought  of  as  belong 
ing  to  their  company  and  in  fact  the  last  late  product  of 
the  age  of  their  genius. 

Secondly,  we  are  accustomed  to  think  of  the  Renais 
sance  as  on  the  whole  an  affair  of  the  southern  nations, 
and  especially  of  Italy;  but  it  was  a  European  move 
ment,  a  wave  of  thought  and  peculiar  passion  that  slowly 
crept  up  the  North,  and  it  reached  its  furthest  point  in 
England,  and  there,  as  I  think,  it  reached  its  highest  lit 
erary  development.  Shakespeare  was  the  climax  of  the\ 
Renaissance;  its  passion  for  individuality,  for  a  free 
career  for  the  human  soul,  and  its  instinct  of  the  dignity 
of  personal  life,  were  the  very  forces  to  unlock  most 


io8  THE  [TORCH 

potently  dramatic  power;  and  in  Shakespeare  this  was 
accomplished,  and  you  know  how  besides  he  used  its 
material  and  lived  hi  its  atmosphere.  Spenser,  also,  as 
I  said  hi  the  last  lecture,  took  the  worship  of  beauty  and 
the  idea  of  the  courtier  from  the  Renaissance,  spiritual 
ized  the  one  and  Christianized  the  other,  and  gave  them  a 
new  career  in  English  Puritanism.  Milton  is  to  be  asso 
ciated  with  Shakespeare  and  Spenser,  as  a  third  and  the 
last  great  representative  of  the  Renaissance  in  England, 
and  as  there  carrying  its  epic  power  to  a  degree  of  per 
fection  far  beyond  what  it  had  reached  in  Italy,  exceeding 
both  Ariosto  and  Tasso;  in  him  were  the  learning 
and  taste  of  the  Renaissance,  its  cultivation  of  individ 
uality  and  respect  for  it  —  in  both  matter  and  spirit 
he  belonged  fundamentally  to  that  movement,  and  was 
its  latest  climax.  I  therefore  define  his  historical  posi 
tion  as  being  the  point  at  which  religious  poetry  was  com 
pletely  humanized  in  England,  and  at  which  the  Renais 
sance  spirit  generally  as  a  European  movement  culmi 
nated  in  epic  poetry. 

"Paradise  Lost"  is  the  poem  by  which  Milton  lives. 
Fond  as  we  may  be  of  his  younger  verse,  and  apprecia 
tive  of  the  eloquence  of  "Paradise  Regained"  and  of  the 
tragic  simplicity  of  "Samson  Agonistes,"  yet  popular 
judgment  is  to  be  followed  in  finding  in  "Paradise  Lost" 
the  true  center  of  Milton's  genius.  Every  poet  who 
achieves  a  single  great  poem  puts  his  whole  mind  into  it, 
empties  his  mind  and  tells  all  he  knows;  his  felicity  is  to 
find  a  subject  which  permits  him  to  do  this;  such  was  the 
course  of  Homer  and  Virgil,  Dante,  Spenser,  Goethe,  to 
name  a  few,  and  Milton  was  no  exception  to  the  rule, 
He  included  in  his  poem  the  entire  history  of  the  universe 
from  the  heaven  which  was  before  creation  to  the  millen- 


MILTON  109 

nium  which  shall  be  the  consummation  of  all  things; 
and,  in  this  great  sphere  of  action  he  chose  as  the  objec 
tive  point  the  moral  relation  of  mankind  to  God,  cer 
tainly  the  highest  subject  in  importance;  and  in  elabor 
ating  his  work  he  used  all  the  wealth  of  his  literary 
knowledge  and  culture,  the  entire  literary  tradition  of 
the  race,  just  as  Spenser  did  —  only  more  broadly;  what 
ever,  either  in  matter  or  method,  there  was  serviceable 
in  past  literature  —  Hebrew,  Greek,  Latin,  Italian,  and 
English  —  all  this  Milton  used.  He  grasped  and  con 
structed  the  subject  with  great  mental  power  and  artistic 
skill;  although,  in  minor  parts,  his  conventional  machin 
ery  and  devices  have  been  attacked,  the  leading  lines  of 
his  construction  stand  clear  of  criticism.  He  really  took 
three  great  themes,  any  one  of  which  would  have  fur 
nished  forth  a  poem,  and  blended  them  together  with 
such  dexterity  that  they  are  seldom  separated  even  in 
analysis  —  so  perfect  is  the  unity  of  the  resulting  whole. 
In  the  first  place,  you  recognize  at  once  in  "Paradise 
Lost"  a  Christian  adaptation  of  the  Titan  Myth.  The 
rebellion  of  the  angels  is  conceived  as  a  war  of  the  Titans 
against  the  gods;  and  is  treated  in  accordance  with  Greek 
imagination  as  a  conflict  in  which  the  mountains  were 
used  as  weapons:  — 

"From  their  foundations,  loosening  to  and  fro, 
They  plucked  the  seated  hills,  with  all  their  load, 
Rocks,  waters,  woods,  and  by  the  shaggy  tops 
Uplifting,  bore  them  in  their  hands.    Amaze, 
Be  sure,  and  terror,  seized  the  rebel  host 
When  coming  towards  them  so  dread  they  saw 
The  bottom  of  the  mountains  upward  turned  .  .  . 
Themselves  invaded  next,  and  on  their  heads 
Main  promontories  flung,  which  in  the  air 
Came  shadowing  .    .    . 


no  THE   TORCH 

So  hills  amid  the  air  encountered  hills, 
.  .  .  horrid  confusion  heaped 
Upon  confusion  rose." 

Satan  on  the  flood  of  hell  is  conceived  as  of  Titanic 
form: 

"With  head  uplift  above  the  wave,  and  eyes 
That  sparkling  blazed ;  his  other  parts  besides 
Prone  on  the  flood,  extended  long  and  large, 
Lay  floating  many  a  road,  in  bulk  as  huge 
As  whom  the  fables  name  of  monstrous  size, 
Titanian  or  Earth-born,  that  warred  on  Jove, 
Briareos  or  Typhon" — 

and  you  recall  how  he  reared  himself  from  off  the  fiery 
lake,  and  took  his  station  on  the  shore,  with  the  ponder 
ous  shield  whose  "broad  circumference  hung  on  his 
shoulders  like  the  moon,"  and  stayed  his  steps  with  his 
tall  spear  - 

"To  equal  which  the  tallest  pine 
Hewn  on  Norwegian  hills,  to  be  the  mast 
Of  some  great  ammiral,  were  but  a  wand;" 

and  there  summoning  his  squadrons  loomed  over  them 
like  the  sun  "in  dim  eclipse,  disastrous  twilight  shed 
ding  on  half  the  nations."  Such  is  Satan's  figure  at  the 
first,  and  it  is  by  such  images  of  Titanic  darkened  gran 
deur  that  his  form  is  most  vividly  remembered.  I  have 
spoken  of  the  difficulty  the  poets  have  had  in  defining 
the  forms  of  the  Titans  to  the  eye.  Milton  solves  the 
problem  by  ascribing  to  the  devil  and  his  angels  no  deter 
minate  form;  they  are,  so  to  speak,  collapsible  and  ex 
tensible  at  will;  and  they  take  the  appropriate  scales  of 
proportion  in  whatever  scene  they  are  placed. 

It  is  common  to  think  of  Satan  as  the  true  hero  of  the 


MILTON  in 

poem,  and  as  an  imaginative  figure  he  certainly  occupies 
the  foreground;  yet  to  Milton  he  was  a  hateful  being,  and 
I  am  convinced  that  familiarity  with  the  poem  takes 
from  him  that  admiration  which  properly  should  belong 
to  the  hero,  and  at  the  end  he  is  clearly  felt  as  the  object 
of  repulsive  evil,  whom  Milton  meant  him  to  be.  Mil 
ton's  method,  after  presenting  Satan  hi  somber  but  ma 
jestic  form,  is  gradually  to  debase  him  to  the  eye  as  well 
as  to  the  mind.  Here  the  treatment  sets  him  apart  from 
any  conception  of  the  Titan  Prometheus  in  bonds;  for 
Prometheus  is  never  felt  to  be  debased  even  physically 
by  the  punishment  of  Zeus.  The  first  revolt  of  the 
reader's  mind  from  its  initial  admiration  for  Satan  takes 
place,  I  think,  acutely  in  the  scene  at  the  gate  of  hell 
when  he  meets  Sin  and  Death.  The  association  of  Satan 
with  such  horrible  beings  as  they  are  represented  to  be, 
and  the  knowledge  that  his  intimacy  with  them  is  that  of 
fatherhood,  shocks  the  mind  with  ugliness  —  ugliness  that 
is  almost  bestial  in  its  effect.  When  he  reaches  the  new 
earth,  after  his  address  to  the  Sun,  he  is  seen  trans 
formed  in  countenance  — 

"Thus  while  he  spake,  each  passion  dimmed  his  face 
Thrice  changed  with  pale  —  ire,  envy  and  despair, 
Which  marred  his  borrowed  visage  —  " 

and  soon  he  is  "squat  like  a  toad"  at  the  ear  of  Eve; 
whence  touched  by  the  young  angel's  spear,  he  rises 
"the  grisly  King,"  so  changed  from  his  heavenly  self 
that  he  is  unrecognized.  Then,  after  one  more  grand  Ti 
tanic  figuring  of  his  might  —  the  most  impressive  of  all 
—  as  he  opposes  Gabriel :  — 

"On  the  other  side,  Satan,  alarmed, 
Collecting  all  his  might,  dilated  stood, 


ii2  THE   TORCH 

Like  Teneriff  or  Atlas,  unremoved: 

His  stature  reached  the  sky,  and  on  his  crest 

Sat  Horror  plumed ;  — " 

after  this  unforgetable  and  heroic  figure,  Milton  dis 
misses  him  from  the  poem  in  the  scene  in  hell,  where,  re 
turning  after  his  triumph  to  take  the  applause  of  his  host, 
he  is,  in  the  moment  of  his  highest  boasting,  transformed 
into  the  serpent  with  all  his  followers  in  like  forms  —  a 
scene  so  repellent  that  perhaps  none  has  been  more  ad 
versely  commented  on.  This  gradual  degradation  of  Sa 
tan,  in  his  form,  is,  it  seems  to  me,  a  cardinal  point  in  the 
poem.  It  is  to  be  associated  with  Milton's  idea  of  beauty 
—  that  Platonic  idea  which  I  mentioned.  The  first  ob 
servation  of  Satan  in  hell  is  the  lost  brightness  of  Beelze 
bub  whom  he  addresses: 

"If  thou  beest  he  —  but  oh,  how  fallen!  how  changed 
From  him,  who,  in  the  happy  realms  of  light 
Clothed  with  transcendent  brightness,  didst  outshine 
Myriads,  though  bright!  —  " 

When  he  comes  to  the  new  creation,  the  radiance  of  the 
sun  reminds  him  of  the  same  change  in  himself,  and 
when  the  young  angel  surprises  him  in  Eden,  it  is  his 
lost  beauty  that  he  mourns. 

"So  spake  the  cherub:  and  his  grave  rebuke, 
Severe  in  youthful  beauty,  added  grace 
Invincible.    Abashed  the  Devil  stood 
And  felt  how  awful  goodness  is,  and  saw 
Virtue  in  her  shape  how  lovely  —  saw,  and  pined 
His  loss;  but  chiefly  to  find  here  observed 
His  luster  visibly  impaired." 

The  power  of  beauty  over  him  is  the  last  vestige  of  his 
lost  nobility.  Thus  in  Eden  gazing  on  Adam  and  Eve, 
he  says,  — 


MILTON  113 

"Whom  my  thoughts  pursue 
With  wonder,  and  could  love:  so  lively  shines 
In  them  divine  resemblance;" 

and  just  before  the  temptation,  in  the  presence  of  Eve, 
he  felt  her  beauty  to  be  such  that  — 

"That  space  the  evil  One  abstracted  stood 
From  his  own  evil,  and  for  the  time  remained 
Stupidly  good,  of  enmity  disarmed, 
Of  guile,  of  hate,  of  envy,  of  revenge." 

It  is  only  by  a  recovery  of  his  evil  nature  that  he  gains 
power  to  go  on  with  his  deceit.  Such  relics  of  faded  glory 
as  his  brow  wore,  such  relics  of  the  sense  of  beauty  also 
remained  in  his  spirit.  The  debasement  of  his  form,  cul 
minating  in  the  scorpion  scene  in  hell,  is  —  for  Milton 
—  one  and  the  same  thing  with  the  corruption  of  his 
moral  nature,  and  is  in  fact  a  principal  means  of  charac 
terization;  for  in  each  new  act  Satan  takes  a  new  form. 
There  is  nothing  elsewhere  in  literature  quite  like  this. 
It  is,  however,  the  peculiar  meanness  of  his  revenge 
which  most  degrades  Satan's  character;  in  his  rebellion 
against  God,  in  his  unavailing  courage,  when  powers  felt 
and  depicted  as  great  are  matched  against  omnipo 
tence,  in  the  mere  ruin  of  such  tremendous  power,  there 
are  sublime  elements;  but  in  his  triumph  over  mankind 
there  is  no  true  joining  of  forces  for  equal  encounter  — 
in  fact  Satan  is  never  brought  in  contact  with  Adam  di 
rectly  —  and  though  Paradise  is  surrounded  with  guards 
and  watched  over  by  Uriel  in  the  sun,  these  are  no  real 
defences;  mankind  is  felt  to  be  unsheltered,  the  power 
of  Adam  and  Eve  to  remain  obedient  is  not  so  presented 
as  to  seem  a  match  for  the  power  of  the  devil,  and  Satan 
consequently  appears  to  triumph  over  a  weak  and  inno- 


U4  THE   TORCH 

cent  foe,  harmless  to  him,  whom  he  sacrifices  in  a  malig 
nant  spirit  of  revenge  by  ignoble  and  secret  ways.  In 
his  own  character,  and  apart  from  man,  Satan  embodies 
the  Renaissance  ideal  of  the  freedom  of  the  individual, 
of  the  affirmation  of  one's  own  life,  of  development  of 
one's  powers  and  qualities  and  opportunities  —  he  is  like 
a  brilliant,  unscrupulous,  rebellious  Italian  prince  having 
his  own  way  with  the  world  he  is  born  into;  to  conceive 
of  him  as  resembling  an  English  rebel  against  the  Crown, 
or  at  all  indebted  to  that  character,  except  perhaps  in  the 
point  of  resolute  defiance,  is,  I  think,  to  misconceive  him 
altogether,  although  it  is  a  common  view.  He  was,  on 
the  contrary,  the  Renaissance  prince  seeking  his  free 
career,  valuing  individual  talent  and  force  above  every 
thing,  the  concentration  of  personal  faculty,  pride,  ambi 
tion  —  and  conscienceless  in  his  determination  to  live  all 
his  life  out.  In  his  struggle  with  omnipotence,  he  secures 
respect  for  certain  qualities  of  strength  which  in  alliance 
with  virtue  are  great  qualities,  and  even  in  wickedness 
do  not  lose  their  impressiveness;  but  in  his  easy  triumph 
over  Eve  in  the  Garden,  and  in  its  consequence  to  man 
kind,  he  becomes  contemptible  hi  his  aim,  his  method,  and 
his  being. 

Certain  important  differences  in  the  Titan  Myth  as 
treated  by  Milton  should  be  noticed.  You  observe  that 
the  Greek  situation  is  reversed:  the  angels  are  the 
younger  race  of  beings,  and  according  to  Greek  ideas 
should  have  succeeded  and  thereby  have  asserted  the 
principle  of  progress.  The  angels,  however,  were  de 
feated.  Of  course,  there  is  no  room  in  the  scheme  of  the 
universe,  as  Milton  conceived  it,  for  any  progress  —  the 
being  and  the  reign  of  God  are  already  perfect,  and 
progress  is  only  the  salvation  of  man,  that  is,  a  restora- 


MILTON  115 

tion  of  things.  Restoration,  not  Revolution,  is  Milton's 
cardinal  idea.  It  follows  from  this  that  hell  is  necessarily 
the  end  of  the  angels;  it  is  a  cul-de-sac,  a  blind  alley  —  it 
leads  nowhere  —  it  has  no  future;  the  poem  stops  in  that 
direction  as  if  it  had  run  against  a  wall.  The  denial  of 
progress  has  brought  everything  to  a  standstill,  with  eter 
nal  damnation  for  the  angels  and  ultimate  restoration 
for  mankind.  It  is  here,  I  think,  that  modern  sympathy 
parts  company  with  this  portion  of  the  poem  —  that  is, 
with  the  conception  of  hell  in  it.  Our  thoughts  are  so 
pledged  to  the  idea  of  progress,  to  the  thought  of  evolu 
tion  as  the  law  of  all  created  beings,  that  the  notion  of 
hell  as  a  kind  of  sink  and  prison  of  the  universe  finds  no 
place  for  itself  in  our  minds.  The  only  thing  in  civiliza 
tion  that  resembles  hell  is  the  modern  jail,  and  that  we 
desire  most  potently  to  eliminate,  in  the  sense  that  it  shall 
not  be  a  place  that  leads  nowhere,  even  for  the  most  hard 
ened.  I  desire,  however,  only  to  set  sharply  over  against 
each  other  in  your  minds  the  Hebrew  fixity  of  Milton's 
thought  and  the  Greek  idea  of  progress,  as  they  are 
brought  out  by  the  mythic  wars  of  heaven  in  each  case; 
and  to  suggest  that  the  failure  of  the  poem  to  interest  the 
modern  mind  hi  hell,  except  as  a  spectacle,  is  connected 
with  the  fundamental  denial  of  progress  in  it,  and  its 
departure  from  the  thought  of  development. 

The  second  great  theme  which  Milton  incorporated 
into  his  poem  is  the  Bowerof  Bliss.  This  is  the  theme  by 
means  of  which  love,  which  next  to  war  is  the  great  sub 
ject  of  poetry,  enters  into  the  epic;  the  hero  is  with 
drawn  from  battle,  and  tempted  to  forget  his  career  in 
the  world,  by  love  for  a  woman.  The  importance  of  the 
theme,  and  its  relative  proportion  of  interest  in  the  epic 
as  a  whole,  steadily  increased  —  it  was  a  convenient  way 


n6  THE   TORCH 

of  withdrawing  the  leading  character  and  giving  the  other 
heroes  an  opportunity  for  display  free  from  his  rivalry, 
it  was  interesting  in  itself  as  opening  up  the  whole  field 
of  the  romance  and  tragedy  of  love,  and  it  was  the  best 
kind  of  an  episode  to  vary  the  story.  Thus  the  loves  of 
^Eneas  for  Dido,  in  the  "^Eneid,"  and  of  Armida  for  Ri- 
naldo  in  "Tasso,"  were  represented.  For  Milton  Eden  is 
a  Bower  of  Bliss,  in  this  sense.  It  freed  his  hand  for  de 
scription  of  nature  in  her  softest  scenes  and  in  the  at 
mosphere  of  love.  You  may  recall  Tennyson's  summary 
of  it,  in  his  lines  on  Milton  — 

"Me  rather  all  that  bowery  loneliness, 
The  brooks  of  Eden  mazily  murmuring, 
And  bloom  profuse,  and  cedar  arches 
Charm,  as  a  wanderer  out  in  ocean 
Where  some  refulgent  sunset  of  India, 
Streams  o'er  a  rich  ambrosial  ocean-isle, 
And  crimson-hued  the  stately  palm-woods 
Whisper  in  odorous  heights  of  even." 

Here  Milton  had  the  characteristic  scenery  of  the  Bower 
of  Bliss,  and  he  elaborated  it  with  Renaissance  richness 
of  luxurious  natural  detail.  The  situation  was  also  char 
acteristic,  and  the  power  of  woman  to  weaken  the  moral 
force  of  the  hero  through  love  was  illustrated:  the  issue 
only  was  different,  for  whereas  in  the  normal  epic  the 
hero  breaks  his  bonds  and  goes  back  to  his  career  — 
to  the  founding  of  Rome  or  the  capture  of  Jerusalem  — 
Adam  was  made  the  tragic  victim  of  his  fall,  and  with 
him  all  mankind.  Adam,  from  every  point  of  view,  holds 
an  unenviable  position,  for  a  hero:  he  never,  as  I  have 
said,  is  brought  to  a  direct  encounter  with  Satan,  his 
great  enemy,  and  in  this  round-about  conflict  in  which 
he  falls  through  the  temptation  of  Eve  his  defeat  is  irrep- 


MILTON  117 

arable.  It  is  singular  to  observe  that  in  the  only  other 
English  poem  of  epical  action  —  in  Tennyson's  "Idylls 
of  the  King,"  Arthur  is  similarly  a  hero  of  defeat;  the 
breaking  of  the  Round  Table  is  the  catastrophe,  brought 
about  by  the  sin  of  Guinevere  in  the  orthodox  conven 
tional  way,  and  Arthur,  when  he  sails  away  "to  heal  him 
of  his  grievous  wound"  leaves  a  lost  cause  behind  him  in 
the  world.  It  would  be  a  curious  enquiry  —  could  one 
answer  it  —  why  the  two  great  epic  poems  of  the  English 
represent  the  cause  of  the  higher  life  as  suffering  a  tem 
porary  overthrow  in  this  world.  Not  to  enter  upon  that, 
however,  I  have  only  time  to  point  out  that,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  modern  sympathy  also  parts  company  with  Mil 
ton  in  this  portion  of  the  poem,  inasmuch  as  it  has 
grown  unnatural  for  us  to  regard  womanhood  as  the  pe 
culiar  means  by  which  moral  character  is  impaired,  and 
the  world  lost;  rather  we  go  with  Spenser  in  his  convic 
tion  that  womanhood  is  the  inspiration  of  noble  life.  The 
character  of  Eve  as  Milton  drew  it  is  from  a  very  an 
cient  world  of  myth  and  race- thought:  the  influence  of 
chivalry  on  the  worldly  side,  and  on  the  spiritual  side 
the  influence  of  the  beatification  of  motherhood  in  the 
Virgin  Mary,  have  profoundly  affected  and  changed  the 
ancient  thought,  and  though  not  unfelt  in  Milton  they 
have  not  sufficient  power  in  him  to  modify  essentially 
the  primitive  conception  of  Eve.  It  is  the  more  unfortu 
nate  that  Milton's  own  temper,  as  a  husband,  was  such 
that  he  has  vigorously  emphasized  in  his  poem  the  infe 
riority  of  woman  to  man,  her  natural  subjection  to  him, 
and  in  general  has  left  to  her  only  that  loveliness  and 
charm  which  most  appealed  to  him  as  a  poet. 

The  third  great  theme  of  Milton  is  a  cosmogony  — 
that  is,  a  story  of  creation:  it  is  told  by  Raphael  to  Adam, 


u8  THE   TORCH 

and  it  is  supplemented  by  the  history  of  mankind  which 
is  shown  to  Adam  prophetically  by  Michael.  It  has  been 
the  fashion  of  science  to  ridicule,  as  Huxley  did,  Mil 
ton's  description  of  the  origin  of  living  creatures;  but  as 
a  tale  of  creation,  his  story  is  quite  the  most  consistent  / 
and  nobly  imaginative  of  any  that  poets  have  told,  and1 
his  panorama  of  history  is  effectively  unrolled,  with 
comprehensiveness,  vigor  of  thought  and  vividness  of 
scene.  In  two  respects,  nevertheless,  modern  sympathy 
parts  company  with  Milton  here,  too.  He  adopted  as  his 
scheme  of  the  universe  of  space,  you  remember,  the 
older  or  Ptolemaic  idea,  that  the  earth  is  the  center,  and 
is  surrounded  by  the  spheres,  one  inside  another,  till  you 
reach  the  outermost  or  primum  mobile.  He  knew,  of 
course,  the  Copernican  scheme,  which  we  now  all  hold, 
when  we  think  of  the  relation  of  the  earth  to  the  sun  and 
stars.  It  was,  I  think,  the  classical  prepossession  of  his 
mind  —  his  desire  for  a  world  limited,  closed  and  clear, 
like  a  Greek  temple  —  which  led  him  to  adopt  this  older 
scheme  of  the  universe.  But  the  result  is  that  the  rest  of 
the  poem  is  apt  to  seem  as  antiquated  as  its  celestial 
geography.  Again,  in  his  view  of  history,  he  necessarily 
made  human  history  unroll  as  a  consequence  of  the  fall 
of  Adam,  and  gave  an  importance  to  its  Biblical  events, 
which  they  can  only  retain  in  a  limited  way.  The  center 
and  movement  of  history  are  now  so  differently  con 
ceived  by  the  general  modern  mind  that  Milton's  ac 
count  of  history  has  little  essential  interest  to  the  reader. 
Such,  as  it  lies  in  my  mind,  is  the  composition  of  the 
"Paradise  Lost"  —  a  Titan  Myth,  a  Bower  of  Bliss, 
and  a  Cosmogony  or  story  of  creation  and  history, 
blended  into  one  unified  poem  in  which  the  central 
event  is  the  fall  of  Adam.  It  is  a  poem  of  the  Renais- 


MILTON  119 

sance,  the  last  great  product  of  that  movement  flowering 
in  the  far  and  Puritan  North;  it  is  enriched  with  all  the 
treasures  of  the  New  Learning,  softened  with  all  the 
imaginative  graces  of  humanism;  and  in  the  great  charac 
ter  of  Satan,  it  presents,  on  his  noble  side,  the  most  mag 
nificent  embodiment  of  the  Renaissance  ideal  of  free  and 
imperious  individuality,  and  on  his  ignoble  side  it  reflects 
some  of  the  fairest  gleams  of  Platonic  philosophy.  I 
have  indicated  in  what  important  ways  it  seems  dis 
connected  with  the  modern  mind,  in  its  scientific  and  his 
toric  schemes,  in  its  primitive  view  of  the  evil  of  woman 
hood,  and  in  its  opposition  to  the  idea  of  progress.  I 
should  perhaps  sum  this  last  idea  to  a  point,  and  say  that 
in  the  poem  the  charter  of  free-will  which  the  Creator 
gives  to  the  angels  and  to  Adam  operates  as  a  limitation 
on  omnipotence;  it  is  impossible  for  the  modern  mind  to 
look  on  the  Creator  except  as  the  giver  of  good;  and  yet 
his  gift  in  this  poem  so  operates  as  to  make  his  omnipo 
tence  continually  manifest  in  the  act  of  damnation;  it 
operates  to  damn  the  angels  through  their  revolt,  to 
damn  Adam  through  his  fall,  and  to  damn  mankind 
through  Adam.  Within  the  limits  of  the  action  described, 
the  poem  is  thus  from  the  first  line  to  the  last  a  poem  of 
the  damnation  of  things,  in  which  the  fact  of  final  partial 
restoration  is  present  as  an  intention  and  promise  only. 
This  is  what  makes  it  a  poem  of  past  time,  and  removes 
it  far  from  the  modern  mind.  For  the  democratic  idea 
—  which  is  the  modern  mind  —  is  a  power  to  save:  it  will 
have  no  prisons  of  vengeance,  no  servile  nor  outcast 
races,  no  closed  gates  of  hopeless  being.  "Paradise 
Lost"  is  thus  set  behind  us,  as  an  embodiment  of  a  his 
torical  phase  of  the  Christian  idea  —  like  Dante. 
I  am  aware  that  the  verdict  seems  adverse  to  Milton; 


120  THE   TORCH 

but  it  is  not  so  in  reality,  though  I  desire  to  make  plain 
the  fact  that  " Paradise  Lost"  is  now  a  historical  poem,\ 
a  past  event  in  the  imaginative  life  of  the  race.  But  no 
words  I  can  use  would  sufficiently  express  the  admira 
tion  which  this  poem  excites  hi  me  —  not  merely  for  its 
unrivalled-music,  nor  for  its  sJLyJe  which  Matthew  Ar 
nold  thought  keeps  it  alive,  but  for  its  construction  as  an 
act  of  intellect,  for  its  sublime  imagination  in  dealing 
with  infinite  space,  infinite  time,  and  eternity  and  the 
beings  of  eternity;  for  its  beautiful  surface  in  the  scenes 
in  Paradise,  its  idyllic  sweetness  and  charm,  the  habitual 
eloquence  and  noble  demeanor  in  the  characters;  nor 
do  I  find  its  later  books  less  excellent,  in  which  austere 
thought  and  nakedness  of  idea  more  appear  —  the  char 
acteristics  of  the  poet  coming  into  his  own,  and  content 
with  truth  unadorned,  simple  and  plain  —  the  sign  and 
proof,  of  which  "Paradise  Regained"  and  "Samson 
Agonistes"  are  greater  examples,  that  as  a  poet  he  was 
perfected.  Small  in  amount,  indeed,  is  the  verse  that  I 
have  read  more  often;  such  strength,  such  exquisiteness, 
such  elevation,  he  has  no  rival  in,  for  power  and  grace, 
for  refinement;  his  voice  is  master  of  his  theme;  and  he  is 
seated  in  the  heavens  of  poetry  where  Shelley  saw  him  — 

"The  third  among  the  sons  of  light." 


VII 
WORDSWORTH 

WE  approach  our  own  times;  and  if,  hitherto,  litera 
ture  has  seemed  to  us  a  somewhat  far-off  thing,  a  thing 
of  the  Greek  Myth,  of  chivalric  allegory,  of  the  Renais 
sance  hero,  it  should  now  grow  near  and  fast  to  us  as  our 
chief  present  aid  in  leading  that  large  race-life  of  the 
mind  whose  end,  as  I  have  said,  is  to  free  the  individual 
soul.  The  notion  that  poetry  is  a  thing  remote  from  life 
is  a  singular  delusion;  it  is  more  truly  to  be  described 
as  the  highway  of  our  days,  though  we  tread  it,  as  chil 
dren  tread  the  path  of  innocence,  without  knowing  it. 
Nothing  is  more  constant  in  the  life  of  boy  or  man  than 
the  outgoing  of  his  soul  into  the  world  about  him,  and 
this  outgoing,  however  it  be  achieved,  is  the  act  of  poetry. 
It  is  in  the  realmjof  nature  that  these  journeys  first  take 
place;  nature  is  a  medium  by  which  the  soul  passes  out 
into  a  larger  existence;  and  as  nature  is  very  close  to  all 
men,  perhaps  our  experience  with  her  offers  the  most 
universal,  certainly  it  offers  the  most  elementary,  illus 
tration  of  the  poetical  life  which  all  men  in  some  meas 
ure  lead.  Wordsworth  is,  pre-eminently,  a  guide  in  this 
region;  and,  as  he  was  less  indebted  than  poets  usually 
are  to  the  great  tradition  of  literature  in  past  ages, 
poetry  in  him  seems  more  exclusively  a  thing  of  the  pres 
ent  life,  contemporary  and  altogether  our  own.  Such  a 
poet,  endeavoring  by  a  conscious  reform  to  renew  poetry 

121 


122  THE   TORCH 

in  his  age  and  bring  it  home  to  man's  bosom,  eliminating 
the  conventional  ways,  images,  and  language  even  of 
the  poetic  past,  is  necessarily  thrown  back  on  nature, 
in  the  external  world,  and  on  character,  in  the  internal 
world,  for  his  subject-matter;  history,  except  in  con 
temporary  forms,  will  be  far  from  him,  and  of  myth  and 
chivalry,  of  Plato  and  the  Italians,  though  he  will  have 
his  share,  he  will  have  the  least  possible.  This  may 
leave  his  verse  bare  and  monotonous  in  quality,  but  what 
substance  it  does  contain  will  have  great  vitality,  for 
it  comes  directly  from  the  man.  You  will  observe,  how 
ever,  that  his  narrower  scope  of  learning,  treatment,  and 
theme  makes  no  difference  in  the  essential  point  of 
interest.  His  longest  and  most  deliberate  poem  —  that 
one  into  which  he  tried  to  empty  his  entire  mind,  as  I 
said  is  a  great  poet's  way  —  "The  Prelude,"  is  the  his 
tory  of  the  formation  of  his  mind;  that  is,  plainly,  his 
subject  is  the  same  as  Spenser's  —  how  in  our  days  is  a 
human  soul  brought  to  its  fullness  of  power  and  grace? 
The  manner,  the  story,  the  accessories,  the  entire  color 
and  atmosphere,  are  changed  from  what  they  were  in 
the  Elizabethan  times,  but  the  question  abides.  Spenser 
is  hardly  aware  that  nature  has  anything  to  do  with 
forming  the  soul;  to  Wordsworth,  nature  seems  its  chief 
nourishment  and  fosterer,  almost  its  creator.  I  desire  to 
illustrate  how  Wordsworth  represented  the  outgoing  of 
the  soul  in  nature,  as  a  part  of  its  discipline,  its  educa 
tion  in  life,  like  the  quest  of  the  Knights  in  Spenser. 

When  you  go  out  to  walk  alone  in  a  scene  of  natural 
beauty,  your  senses  are  first  excited  and  interested;  but 
often  there  arise  in  consequence  feelings  and  ideas  har 
monious  with  the  scene,  and  emotionally  touched  with 
it,  which  gradually  absorb  your  consciousness;  and  at 


WORDSWORTH  123 

last  you  find  yourself  engaged  in  a  mood  —  perhaps  of 
memory  —  from  which  the  external  scene  has  entirely 
dropped  away  or  round  which  it  is  felt  only  as  a  nimbus 
or  halo  of  beauty,  or  mystery  or  calm.  This  happens  con 
stantly  and  normally  to  all  of  ns,  and  it  is  an  act  of 
poetry;  for  it  is  the  very  method  and  secret  of  the  lyric. 
The  poet  receiving  some  impulse  through  his  senses 
delights  in  it,  and  rises  by  natural  harmony  to  feelings 
and  ideas  that  belong  with  such  joy,  and  ends  in  the 
higher  pleasure  to  which  his  senses  have  served  him  as 
the  stairway  of  divine  surprise.  Such  a  poem  is  Burns's 
"Highland  Mary";  he  begins  with  the  outer  scene, 
woods  and  the  summer,  and  you  will  notice  how  at  the 
end  all  has  dropped  away  except  the  love  in  his  heart: 

"Ye  banks,  and  braes,  and  streams  around 

The  castle  o'  Montgomery, 
Green  be  your  woods,  and  fair  your  flowers, 

Your  waters  never  drumlie! 
There  simmer  first  unfauld  her  robes, 

And  there  the  langest  tarry; 
For  there  I  took  my  last  fareweel 

O'  my  sweet  Highland  Mary. 

How  sweetly  bloom'd  the  gay  green  birk, 

How  rich  the  hawthorn's  blossom, 
As  underneath  their  fragrant  shade, 

I  clasp 'd  her  to  my  bosom! 
The  golden  hours,  on  angel  wings, 

Flew  o'er  me  and  my  dearie; 
For  dear  to  me,  as  light  and  life, 

Was  my  sweet  Highland  Mary. 

WP  mony  a  vow,  and  lock'd  embrace, 

Our  parting  was  fu'  tender; 
And,  pledging  aft  to  meet  again, 

We  tore  oursels  asunder; 


124  THE   TORCH 

But  oh!    fell  Death's  untimely  frost, 

That  nipt  my  flower  sae  early! 
Now  green  ;s  the  sod,  and  cauld  's  the  clay, 

That  wraps  my  Highland  Mary. 

Oh,  pale,  pale  now,  those  rosy  lips, 

I  aft  hae  kiss'd  sae  fondly; 
And  closed  for  aye  the  sparkling  glance, 

That  dwelt  on  me  sae  kindly! 
And  mouldering  now  in  silent  dust, 

That  heart  that  lo'ed  me  dearly! 
But  still  within  my  bosom's  core 

Shall  live  my  Highland  Mary." 

His  heart  has  taken  the  place  of  all  the  world  as 
Mary's  dwelling. 

This  experience,  this  course  of  emotional  thought,  is 
the  habit  of  the  human  heart;  it  is  repeated  countless 
times  in  any  man's  life.  In  each  case  the  poem  depends 
only  on  where  we  stop  our  minds.  We  may  stop  in  the 
outer  scene,  and  have  only  beautiful  description:  we  may 
go  on  into  the  mood  of  imagination  or  memory,  and  end 
there;  we  may  go  further,  and  reach  some  contact  with 
divine  things,  with  God  in  nature.  It  is  easy  to  illustrate 
the  matter  from  Wordsworth,  for  he  has  himself  defined 
these  stages.  You  remember  his  account  of  his  boyish 
skating  on  the  ice: 

«_  All  shod  with  steel 
We  hissed  along  the  polished  ice,  in  games 
Confederate,  imitative  of  the  chase 
And  woodland  pleasures,  —  the  resounding  horn, 
The  pack  loud-bellowing,  and  the  hunted  hare. 
So  through  the  darkness  and  the  cold  we  flew, 
And  not  a  voice  was  idle:  with  the  din 
Meanwhile  the  precipices  rang  aloud; 
The  leafless  trees  and  every  icy  crag 


WORDSWORTH  125 

Tinkled  like  iron;  while  the  distant  hills 
Into  the  tumult  sent  an  alien  sound 
Of  melancholy,  not  unnoticed,  while  the  stars, 
Eastward,  were  sparkling  clear,  and  in  the  west 
The  orange  sky  of  evening  died  away. 

Not  seldom  from  the  uproar  I  retired 
Into  a  silent  bay,  —  or  sportively 
Glanced  sideway,  leaving  the  tumultuous  throng, 
To  cut  across  the  reflex  of  a  star; 
Image,  that,  flying  still  before  me,  gleamed 
Upon  the  glassy  plain:  and  oftentimes, 
When  we  had  given  our  bodies  to  the  wind, 
And  all  the  shadowy  banks  on  either  side 
Came  sweeping  through  the  darkness,  spinning  still 
The  rapid  line  of  motion,  then  at  once 
Have  I,  reclining  back  upon  my  heels, 
Stopped  short;  yet  still  the  solitary  cliffs 
Wheeled  by  me  —  even  as  if  the  earth  had  rolled 
With  visible  motion  her  diurnal  round! 
Behind  me  did  they  stretch  in  solemn  train, 
Feebler  and  feebler,  and  I  stood  and  watched 
Till  all  was  tranquil  as  a  summer  sea." 

Any  boy,  who  has  skated  on  the  river,  has  lived  that 
poem:  has  had  the  physical  sense  of  the  scene,  which 
arouses  in  him  a  certain  reverberation  of  feeling.  The 
second  stage  —  that  of  youth  —  is  as  usual,  though  in 
Wordsworth  it  was  uncommonly  prolonged  and  intense: 

"Though  changed,  no  doubt  from  what  I  was  when  first 
I  came  among  these  hills;  when  like  a  roe 
I  bounded  o'er  the  mountains,  by  the  sides 
Of  the  deep  rivers,  and  the  lonely  streams, 
Wherever  nature  led:  more  like  a  man 
Flying  from  something  that  he  dreads,  than  one 
Who  sought  the  thing  he  loved.    For  nature  then 
(The  coarser  pleasures  of  my  boyish  days, 
And  their  glad  animal  movements  all  gone  by) 


126  THE   TORCH 

To  me  was  all  in  all.  —  I  cannot  paint 
What  then  I  was.    The  sounding  cataract 
Haunted  me  like  a  passion:  the  tall  rock, 
The  mountain,  and  the  deep  and  gloomy  wood, 
Their  colors  and  their  forms,  were  then  to  me 
An  appetite:  a  feeling  and  a  love, 
That  had  no  need  of  a  remoter  charm, 
By  thought  supplied,  or  any  interest 
Unborrowed  from  the  eye.  —  That  time  is  past, 
And  all  its  aching  joys  are  now  no  more, 
And  all  its  dizzy  raptures." 

Here  the  physical  scene  is  less  felt  —  the  excitement,  the 
reverberation,  is  greater.  There  is  the  third  stage,  to 
which  in  this  poem  he  immediately  passed  on: 

"For  I  have  learned 
To  look  on  nature,  not  as  in  the  hour 
Of  thoughtless  youth;   but  hearing  oftentimes 
The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity, 
Nor  harsh  nor  grating,  though  of  ample  power 
To  chasten  and  subdue.     And  I  have  felt 
A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts;   a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man: 
A  motion  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thoughts, 
And  rolls  through  all  things." 

Here  the  physical  scene  has  become  abstract  and  ele 
mental —  diaphanous  beauty  —  and  he  is  in  the  pres 
ence  of  the  divine  power  shining  through  its  veils.  Na 
ture,  beginning  with  the  awe  of  boyhood,  ripening  into 
the  passion  and  high  delight  of  youth,  matures  in  man 
hood  in  the  spiritual  insight  which  makes  the  daily 


WORDSWORTH  127 

process  of  life  in  merely  living  under  the  sky  and  in  sight 
of  earthly  beauty  an  act  of  worship.  It  is  plain,  as  I  said, 
that  the  degree  to  which  any  man  may  live  Wordsworth's 
poem  depends  only  on  where  his  mind  stops  in  its  ordi 
nary  human  process,  whether  with  the  boy  on  the  ice,  the 
youth  on  the  mountains  or  the  man  with  "the  light  of 
setting  suns."  In  all  these  cases,  you  will  notice,  Words 
worth  represents  the  soul  as  going  out  from  him  into 
the  large  material  sphere. 

Wordsworth,  however,  was  acutely  conscious  of  the 
reaction  of  nature  on  mankind,  of  its  formative  power 
over  men  and  their  lives.  The  idea  is  most  familiar  to  us 
as  the  influence  of  the  environment;  and  we  think  of  a 
sea-coast  people,  like  the  Greeks,  as  differing  from  a 
mountaineer  people,  like  the  Swiss,  because  of  their 
natural  surroundings.  The  idea,  however,  is  more  pre 
cise  than  that.  The  field  which  the  farmer  tills  slowly 
bends  his  form  to  itself.  You  remember  Millet's  famous 
painting  "The  Angelus."  The  peasant  who  is  its  center 
has  been  physically  formed  by  toiling  in  the  fields  where 
he  stands;  you  feel  as  you  look,  that  the  landscape  itself 
is  summed  up,  and  almost  embodied  in  him,  its  crea 
ture,  and  the  picture  is  spiritualized,  and  made  a  type  of 
our  common  humanity,  by  the  sound  of  the  Angelus 
reflected  in  his  prayerful  attitude.  That  is  the  way  that 
Wordsworth  conceived  of  nature  as  forming  his  dales 
men  and  shepherds.  There  is  this  landscape  quality  in 
all  his  memorable  characters;  you  think  of  them,  you  see 
them,  in  connection  with  the  soil.  Thus  you  recall  the 
figure  of  the  Reaper;  you  see  her  at  her  task  in  the  field, 
and  the  song  she  sings: 

"The  music  in  my  heart  I  bore 
Long  after  it  was  heard  no  more"  — 


128  THE   TORCH 

that  song  unifies  the  poem  and  spiritualizes  it,  precisely 
as  the  prayer  does  in  "The  Angelus."  So  you  see 
"The  Leech-Gatherers": 

"In  my  mind's  eye  I  seemed  to  see  him  pace 
About  the  weary  moors  continually 
Wandering  about  alone  and  silently;"  — 

So,  too,  Simon  Lee,  the  old  huntsman,  and  Matthew 
at  his  daughter's  grave,  and  Michael,  the  builder  of  the 
sheep-fold,  and  Ruth,  and  good  Lord  Clifford,  are 
landscape  figures. 

Wordsworth  carried  his  thought  of  the  formative 
power  of  nature  beyond  this  point,  and  to  take  at  once 
the  characteristic  poem,  he  saw  nature  forming  the  soul 
of  a  woman: 

"Three  years  she  grew  in  sun  and  shower, 
Then  Nature  said,  'A  lovelier  flower 
On  earth  was  never  sown; 
This  child  I  to  myself  will  take; 
She  shall  be  mine,  and  I  will  make 
A  Lady  of  my  own. 

'Myself  will  to  my  darling  be 

Both  law  and  impulse:  and  with  me 

The  Girl,  in  rock  and  plain, 

In  earth  and  heaven,  in  glade  and  bower, 

Shall  feel  an  overseeing  power 

To  kindle  or  restrain. 

'She  shall  be  sportive  as  the  Fawn 
That  wild  with  glee  across  the  lawn 
Or  up  the  mountain  springs; 
And  hers  shall  be  the  breathing  balm, 
And  hers  the  silence  and  the  calm 
Of  mute  insensate  things 


WORDSWORTH  129 

'The  floating  Clouds  their  state  shall  lend 

To  her;  for  her  the  willow  bend; 

Nor  shall  she  fail  to  see 

Even  in  the  motions  of  the  Storm 

Grace  that  should  mold  the  Maiden's  form 

By  silent  sympathy. 

The  Stars  of  midnight  shall  be  dear 

To  her;  and  she  shall  lean  her  ear 

In  every  secret  place 

Where  Rivulets  dance  their  wayward  round, 

And  beauty  born  of  murmuring  sound 

Shall  pass  into  her  face. 

'And  vital  feelings  of  delight 

Shall  rear  her  form  to  stately  height, 

Her  virgin  bosom  swell; 

Such  thoughts  to  Lucy  I  will  give 

While  she  and  I  together  live 

Here  in  this  happy  Dell/  " 

The  poem  comes  to  its  climax  in  the  thought  that 
"beauty  born  of  murmuring  sound,  shall  pass  into  her 
face."  There  is  nothing  extravagant  in  the  idea.  You 
have  all  seen  a  face  transfigured  while  listening  to  mu 
sic,  or  to  the  sea;  and  the  thought  is  that  such  listening 
being  habitual,  the  expression  becomes  habitual,  and 
not  only  that  but  the  peace  and  joy  and  inner  harmony, 
which  the  expression  denotes,  have  become  habitual, 
that  is,  parts  of  character.  Wordsworth  displays  his 
thought  more  at  length  in  the  "Tintern  Abbey"  lines,  in 
his  counsel  to  his  sister  and  his  confessions  of  his  own 
life  with  nature.  In  consequence  of  this  general  attitude 
of  mind  toward  the  educating  power  of  nature,  Words 
worth  held  his  maxim,  that  we  "can  feed  this  mind  of 
ours  with  wise  passiveness." 


i3o  THE   TORCH 

He  had  a  faith  as  perfect  as  that  of  the  Concord  phil 
osophers  in  the  alms  of  the  idle  'hour.  And  he  did  not 
mean  merely  that  thoughts  and  impressions  stream  in  on 
one,  who  expands  his  petals  to  the  flying  pollen  of 
heaven,  or  that  moral  instances  like  the  lesson  of  the 
Celandine  will  store  his  collector's  box,  but  that  inti 
macy —  habitual  intimacy  with  the  highest  truths  of 
the  soul  —  is  reached  in  this  way.  He  had  the  impres 
sion  that  childhood  was  especially  susceptible  to  these 
influences  and  revelations;  and  the  glorification  of 
childhood  which  is  a  marked  trait  of  his  most  deeply- 
felt  verse,  lies  in  this  neighborhood  of  its  being  to  nature 
and  nature's  revelations.  In  his  ode  on  the  intimations 
of  Immortality"  in  childhood  he  pours  forth,  in  the 
most  passionate  and  eloquent  phrase,  his  clearest, 
most  vivid  and  most  penetrating  intuitions  of  the 
power  of  nature  in  these  ways,  on  the  boy  and  the 
man. 

Such  are  some  of  the  moods  in  which  Wordsworth 
conceived  the  operation  of  nature  on  man  as  molding 
both  general  and  individual  life,  the  thoughts  and  emo 
tions  of  men  and  women,  and  the  soul  of  childhood,  as  if 
nature  were  the  delegated  hand  of  God  to  shape  our 
lives,  and  carried  with  its  touch  some  power  to  impart 
heavenly  wisdom.  Wordsworth,  you  observe,  had  a  very 
primitive  mind;  in  that  act  of  gazing  on  setting  suns  he  is 
not  far  from  being  a  sun-worshipper:  he  still  can  believe 
that  "every  flower  enjoys  the  air  it  breathes."  He 
conceives  of  nature,  as  an  element,  in  grand  lines;  and 
he  thinks  of  the  phases  of  human  life  even  —  of  its  great 
occupations,  its  affections  and  sorrows,  almost  as  if  they 
were  parts  of  nature  —  even  more  closely  united  to  it 
and  with  greater  kindliness  than  Virgil  represented 


WORDSWORTH  131 

them  in  the  Georgics.  This  simple,  primitive,  elemen 
tary  mind  underlies  his  thought  of  childhood,  too,  and 
it  appears,  perhaps,  most  significantly  in  the  fact  that 
when  through  nature  he  touches  on  the  boundaries  of 
divine  being,  he  achieves  no  more  than  a  sense  of  the 
presence  of  God  in  nature  —  it  is  only  a  silent  presence 
—  he  does  not  find,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  at  any  time 
the  voice  of  God  there.  This  is  the  primitive  mood  of 
savage  and  pagan  man. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  well  to  consider  for  a  moment  the 
place  of  nature  in  modern  life,  apart  from  Wordsworth. 
Lucretius,  who  first  took  a  scientific  view  of  the  world, 
as  a  poet,  found  in  nature  the  inveterate  hard  foe  of 
mankind:  he  it  was  who  first  saw  the  careless  gods  look 
down  upon 

"An  ill-used  race  of  men  that  cleave  the  soil, 
Sow  the  seed  and  reap  the  harvest  with  enduring  toil, 
Storing  yearly  little  dues  of  wheat,  and  wine,  and  oil, 
Till  they  perish." 

Virgil,  as  I  have  said,  felt  rather  the  kindly  cooperation 
of  nature  with  man  in  producing  the  fruits  of  the  field, 
and  the  flocks  and  herds  of  the  hills,  to  feed  and  clothe 
us.  Our  view  is  not  so  much  that  of  Lucretius,  of  the 
opposition,  but  rather  of  the  indifference  of  nature.  She 
knows  not  mercy,  nor  justice,  nor  chastity,  nor  any 
human  virtue;  and  man  in  emerging  from  her  world  lives 
in  a  sphere  of  thought,  conduct,  and  aspiration  to  which 
she  is  a  stranger.  Yet,  that  kindly  cooperation  that  Virgil 
saw,  still  continues  on  the  lower  levels  of  life,  and  the 
great  change  is  that,  whereas  of  old  and  in  his  day  the 
sense  of  dependence  on  nature,  that  is  to  say  on  the  gods, 
was  habitual  and  daily,  now  through  the  growth  of  the 


i32  THE   TORCH 

world,  that  dependence  is  no  longer  felt  as  at  all  super 
natural;  the  harvest  ripens  or  fails,  but  we  have  little 
thought  of  the  gods  therewith;  and,  in  fact,  the  habitual 
sense  of  the  dependence  of  our  own  bodies  on  the  favor 
of  heaven  is  a  vanishing  quality.  It  is  a  consequence  of 
this  that  our  life  necessarily  grows  more  purely  spiritual, 
and  such  dependence  on  the  divine  as  is  recognized  is  a 
dependence  of  the  soul  itself,  felt  in  the  contemplative 
mind  and  much  more  in  the  life  of  the  affections.  Na 
ture  as  an  intermediary  between  God  and  man  has  lost 
in  importance,  through  the  growth  and  spread  of  the 
idea  of  the  order  obtaining  in  nature  as  against  the  idea 
of  nature  as  a  series  of  special  providences  in  relation  to 
our  daily  lives.  I  count  this  loss  as  a  gain,  inasmuch  as  it 
throws  the  soul  back  on  its  own  higher  nature  and  essen 
tial  life.  But  there  is  another  change.  Of  old  the  thought 
was  of  the  earth  and  toil  upon  it;  that  was  nature;  now 
our  thought  of  nature  is  of  a  force,  which  we  subdue.  It 
has  come  about  through  the  extraordinary  development 
of  mechanical  skill.  Of  old  we  taught  the  winds  to  waft 
our  ships,  and  the  waters  to  drive  our  mills;  but  now  — 
to  take  the  significant  example  —  we  have  enslaved  the 
lightning.  Nature  has  become  in  our  thoughts  a  Cali 
ban  reduced  to  civility  by  being  put  in  bonds.  I  have 
much  sympathy  with  theoretic  science;  with  the  mind's 
view  of  the  world  —  and  I  recognize  its  noble  results, 
not  only  in  philosophic  thought,  but  in  much  impres 
sionistic  art.  But  I  have  all  of  a  poet's  impatience  of  ap 
plied  science.  I  remember  hearing  a  story  years  ago  of  a 
snail  who  got  mounted  on  a  tortoise:  "My!"  he  said, 
"how  the  grass  whistles  by!"  And  when  I  hear  people 
in  trolley-cars  talk  of  riding  on  the  wings  of  the  lightning 
I  think  of  the  snail.  What  is  the  speed  of  the  lightning  to 


WORDSWORTH  133 

the  swiftness  of  the  "wings  of  meditation  and  the 
thoughts  of  love"  that  the  soul  of  Hamlet  knew?  Is  Ni 
agara  essentially  an  electric-lighting  plant?  I  have 
heard  men  of  science  —  the  same  men  who  told  me  that 
Homer  never  did  anything  of  half  the  importance  of  a 
theorem  in  mechanics  —  I  have  heard  them  sneer  at  the 
old  Greek  idea  that  man  was  the  center  of  the  universe 
—  the  Christian  idea  that  Milton  had  —  the  idea  of 
George  Herbert: 

"Man  is  one  world, 
And  hath  another  to  attend  him: — " 

this  idea  was  man's  foolish  egoism.  But  is  it  a  larger 
idea  to  think  of  nature  as  man's  Jack-of -all-trades? 
For  me,  I  must  say,  science  —  applied  science  —  de 
grades  the  conception  of  nature  in  narrowing  it  to  the 
grooves  of  material  use.  Yet  this  is,  in  general,  our  mod 
ern  idea  —  the  prevailing  idea  —  of  nature.  What  poem 
of  recent  years  has  been  more  acclaimed  than  that  in 
which  a  Scotch  Presbyterian  engineer  found  in  his  en 
gine  the  idea  of  God?  It  is  well  that  he  should  find  the 
idea  there,  as  it  was  well  in  the  eighteenth  century  that 
the  clock-maker  should  find  his  idea  of  God  as  a  clock- 
maker,  since  that  was  the  measure  of  his  knowledge  of 
God;  but,  for  all  that,  the  narrowing  influence  of  these 
scientific  conceptions  is  no  less.  Hence  it  is  that  we  fall 
into  the  commonest  error  of  men  —  the  error  of  per 
spective,  a  wrong  sense  of  the  proportion  of  things.  Our 
eyes  are  fixed  on  the  material  uses  of  nature,  and  he  is 
great  among  us  who  sets  her  to  some  new  task  in  cheap 
ening  steel  or  facilitating  transportation.  Now  in  Words 
worth  there  is  nothing  of  this;  he  hardly  notices,  indeed, 
what  to  Virgil  was  so  important,  her  cooperation  in 


134  THE   TORCH 

agriculture  and  the  life  of  the  farm.  Wordsworth  restores 
to  us  the  spiritual  use  of  nature;  and  the  spiritual  use 
that  man  makes  of  the  world  is  the  really  important 
thing.  With  that  primitive  mind  of  his,  he  realizes  at 
once  the  closeness  with  which  we  are  cradled  in  nature, 
the  universality  of  her  life  round  about  us: 

"He  laid  us  as  we  lay  at  birth 
On  the  cool  flowery  lap  of  earth; 
Smiles  broke  from  us  and  we  had  ease. 
The  hills  were  round  about  us,  and  the  breeze 
Went  o'er  the  sunlit  fields  again: 
Our  foreheads  felt  the  wind  and  rain." 

For  the  least  conscious,  for  the  semi-vital  among  men, 
nature  is  the  blanket  of  God  round  about  them;  for  the 
most  spiritually-minded,  nature  is  the  ante-room  to  His 
presence,  and  our  way  to  a  higher  life.  In  poem  after 
poem  Wordsworth  illustrates  all  modes  of  approach  by 
which  on  the  threshold  of  nature  the  soul  grows  con 
scious  of  itself;  especially  he  shows  how  nature  feeds  the 
mind  with  beauty  through  the  senses: 

"Sensations  sweet 

Felt  in  the  blood  and  felt  along  the  heart 
And  passing  even  into  my  purer  mind;" 

and  thus  is  a  chief  minister  to  us  in  that  building  of  our 
own  world  —  physical,  emotional,  moral  —  each  one  of 
us  for  himself,  which  is  the  necessary  task  of  all.  It  is  not 
a  machine  that  we  have  to  make,  to  hew  wood  and  draw 
water  for  us,  and  carry  us  from  place  to  place  at  elec 
trical  speed;  it  is  a  world  that  we  have  to  build  for  our 
souls  to  live  in  and  grow  through,  a  world  of  happy 
memory,  of  pure  hope,  of  daily  beauty,  the  world  of  our 
habitual  selves,  and  Wordsworth  shows  what  elements 


WORDSWORTH  135 

for  such  a  world  of  the  soul  —  for  such  a  daily  self  — 
nature  provides  and  what  is  the  art  of  its  construction. 
To  Wordsworth,  however,  no  more  than  to  other  poets 
was  nature  the  whole  of  life:  and  even  to  him,  if  you  stop 
to  think  about  it,  nature  has  no  life  of  her  own,  but  is 
only  one  mode  of  the  soul's  existence  and  self-con 
sciousness.  He  came  back  at  last,  as  all  do,  to  man  as 
the  only  subject  that  finally  interests  men.  I  said  that  in 
nature  he  found  only  the  presence,  but  not  the  voice,  of 
God.  The  voice  of  God  he  found  in  his  own  bosom,  in 
conscience,  in  duty,  as  you  remember  in  his  "Ode  to 
Duty"  he  begins: 

"Stern  daughter  of  the  voice  of  God, 
O  Duty  —  if  that  name  thou  love  —  " 

The  second  great  root  of  his  poetry  is  character  — 
moral  character,  and  in  defining  and  enforcing  its  ideals 
none  of  our  poets  is  more  truly  English,  more  truly  of 
the  race  to  which  character  is  always  an  engrossing  and 
primary  interest.  In  the  poem,  called  "The  Happy 
Warrior"  he  delineated  both  the  public  and  private  as 
pects  of  character,  as  conceived  by  the  English,  with  a 
felicity  of  phrase  and  solidity  of  thought,  and  also  with 
eloquent  distinction,  such  as  to  place  the  poem  apart  by 
itself  as  unique  in  our  literature.  The  better  example, 
however,  for  my  purposes,  is  the  portrait  of  a  woman  — 
"She  was  a  phantom  of  delight,"  —  the  companion-piece 
to  that  I  have  already  read  —  in  which  he  begins  from 
the  things  of  sense,  and  goes  on,  in  the  way  I  have  de 
scribed,  to  the  moral,  and  finally  to  the  spiritual  sphere. 
Here  the  lyric  method  of  poetry  is  again  illustrated  — 
how,  starting  from  the  external  world  it  becomes  at  last 
purely  internal  —  which  is  the  method,  as  you  recognize, 


136  THE    TORCH 

of  all  poetical  life  in  essence.  Apart  from  abstract  char 
acter,  the  sphere  of  human  life  which  Wordsworth  most 
attended  to  was  of  course  that  humble  life  of  the  poor 
in  which  he  was  most  interested  because  they  were  near 
to  the  soil,  and,  as  he  thought,  nearer  on  that  account  to 
nature's  hand.  It  is,  however,  a  transparent  error  to 
think  of  dalesmen  and  shepherds  as  nearer  to  nature  in 
this  sense;  it  is  one  of  the  fallacies  of  civilized  life;  for 
Wordsworth  himself  is  the  shining  example  how  much 
more,  in  both  intimacy  and  fullness,  was  his  life  with 
nature  than  that  of  any  other  in  his  generation.  Nature 
is  not  to  be  thought  of  as  a  kind  of  agricultural-school 
education,  a  thing  for  children  and  dalesmen;  but  the 
same  rule  that  holds  of  all  the  gift  of  life  holds  here,  that 
the  beneficence,  the  splendor  and  mystery  of  the  gift,  in 
creases  with  the  power  of  him  who  receives  it.  Words 
worth  was  the  true  and  faithful  poet  of  lowly  lives,  and 
as  such  he  is  endeared  to  humanity;  he  was  the  second 
great  democratic  poet,  succeeding  Burns,  from  whom  he 
learned  to  be  such,  as  he  says;  but  he  comes  more  di 
rectly  and  intimately  into  our  own  lives  through  his  per 
sonal  force  —  through  his  own  experience  of  what  nature 
meant  to  him. 

In  what  sense,  then,  is  Wordsworth  a  race-exponent? 
Principally  and  distinctively  in  the  fact  that  he  sums  up, 
illustrates,  and  amplifies  the  experience  of  the  race  in  its 
direct  relation  to  nature.  With  that  primitive  mind  on 
which  I  have  dwelt,  he  spanned  the  difference  between 
the  earliest  and  the  latest  thought  of  the  race;  to  him,  in 
certain  moods,  nature  was  animated  with  a  life  like  our 
own,  he  believed  it  enjoyed  its  life  as  we  do,  and  this  is 
primeval  belief;  at  the  other  end  of  progress  he  was  as 
pantheistic  as  he  was  animistic  here,  and  saw  nature 


WORDSWORTH  137 

only  as  another  form  of  divine  being.  Thus  he  contem 
plated  nature  almost  as  the  savage  and  almost  as  the 
philosopher,  and  commanded  the  whole  scope  of  hu 
man  thought  with  relation  thereto.  He  presented  nature 
through  this  wide  range  as  a  discipline  of  the  soul  in  its 
development;  it  is,  first,  a  discipline  in  beauty,  in  the 
power  to  see  and  appreciate  loveliness,  and  he  especially 
values  this  as  a  means  of  building  up  a  beautiful  mem 
ory —  perhaps  the  chief  consolation  of  advancing  life. 
So,  in  the  lines  to  the  "Highland  Girl,"  he  writes: 

"In  spots  like  these  it  is  we  prize 
Our  Memory;  feel  that  she  hath  eyes:" 

So  he  wrote  again  of  that  inward  eye 

"Which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude"  — 

and  illustrates  it  by  the  vision  of  the  daffodils;  and  in  the 
same  spirit  counsels  his  sister: 

"Thy  mind 

Shall  be  a  mansion  for  all  lovely  forms, 
Thy  memory  be  as  a  dwelling  place 
For  all  sweet  sounds  and  harmonies." 

Secondly,  it  is  a  discipline  of  the  emotions,  which  nature 
evokes  and  exercises.  The  emotion  is  represented,  nearly 
always  I  think,  as  that  reverberation  of  feeling  which  I 
spoke  of.  Perhaps  its  most  spiritualized  example  is  in 
Tennyson: 

"Tears,  idle  tears:  I  know  not  what  they  mean, 
Tears  from  the  depth  of  some  divine  despair, 
Rise  in  the  heart,  and  gather  to  the  eyes 
In  looking  on  the  happy  autumn  fields, 
And  thinking  of  the  days  that  are  no  more." 


138  THE   TORCH 

The  reverberation  of  emotion,  here,  is  the  poem.  It  is 
this  reverberation,  truly  speaking,  which  Wordsworth 
interprets  as  the  sense  of  the  divine  presence  in  nature: 

"A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts"  - 

Thirdly,  it  is  a  discipline  of  the  moral  sense.  Heie,  per 
haps,  we  have  most  difficulty  in  going  along  with  Words 
worth.  When  he  says: 

"One  impulse  from  a  vernal  wood 

May  teach  you  more  of  man, 
Of  moral  evil  and  of  good 
Than  all  the  sages  can:" 

when  he  writes  of  himself  as 

"Well  pleased  to  recognize 
In  nature,  and  the  language  of  the  sense, 
The  anchor  of  my  purest  thoughts,  the  nurse, 
The  guide,  the  guardian  of  my  heart,  and  soul 
Of  all  my  moral  being"  — 

we  do  not  readily  understand  his  meaning.  Yet  if  you  rec 
ollect  his  life,  as  his  poems  disclose  it  like  a  series  of  an 
ecdotes  of  what  happened  to  him,  you  see  not  only  how 
often  he  returned  from  his  rambles  in  the  hills  with  a 
strengthened  moral  mind  in  consequence  of  some  lesson 
he  may  have  derived  from  some  flower  or  cloud,  which 
spelled  out  for  him  in  an  image  of  beauty  his  secret 
thought,  or  set  up  by  an  initial  impulse  that  train  of  feel 
ing  which  resulted  in  meditative  moral  thought,  but  how 
much  more  often  he  returned  so  strengthened  by  the 
sight  of  some  human  incident,  history  or  character  which 
to  him  wore  the  aspect  of  a  fact  of  nature;  for  he  did  not 
discriminate  between  nature  and  its  operation  in  the 


WORDSWORTH  139 

lives  of  common  folk;  all  life  is  necessarily  moral,  and 
nature  by  passing  influentially  into  the  lives  of  his  dales 
men  and  shepherds  became  thereby  moral  in  essence; 
nature  exceeded  its  bounds  here,  in  the  moral  sphere, 
just  as  in  becoming  divine  it  exceeded  its  bounds  in  the 
spiritual  sphere.  Wordsworth  was  no  pantheist;  he  had 
the  dews  of  baptism  upon  him  and  remained  in  the  pews 
of  the  establishment  all  his  life;  but,  both  in  his  panthe 
istic  verse,  and  in  his  verse  ascribing  moral  wisdom  to 
nature,  he  sincerely  described  certain  experiences  of  his 
own  in  which  he  derived  religious  emotion  and  moral 
strengthening  and  enlightenment  through  his  contact 
with  nature  and  the  natural  lives  of  his  neighbors  on  the 
moors  and  hills.  Emotion  was  always  mainly  fed  in 
him,  imaginatively,  from  the  forms  of  nature;  and  the 
strengthening  of  emotion,  and  the  habit  of  it,  necessa 
rily  builds  up  the  moral  nature  of  man  —  it  is  the  mode 
of  its  nurture.  I  am  accustomed  to  say  that  Keats  is  a 
poet  to  be  young  with,  and  that  Wordsworth  is  a  poet  to 
grow  old  with.  The  element  of  habit  counts  for  much  in 
such  communion  with  nature  as  Wordsworth  illustrates; 
for  it  is  not  any  flash  of  thought  he  brings,  any  revela 
tion  of  emotional  power  as  a  sudden  discovery  of  the 
soul;  the  power  of  nature  has  begun  to  steal  upon  the 
boy,  in  his  skating  or  his  nutting,  or  his  whistling  to  the 
owls,  and  thereafter  it  only  grows.  Meditation,  too,  is  a 
large  element  in  the  habit  Wordsworth  establishes  to 
ward  nature,  and  memory,  as  we  have  seen,  bears  a  part 
in  it.  It  follows  that,  not  only  is  his  power  over  his  read 
ers  cumulative  with  years,  but  his  attitude  toward  na 
ture  must  have  the  force  of  habit  with  us  before  it  can 
render  to  us  what  it  rendered  to  him.  With  the  formation 
of  this  habit  comes  that  consoling  power  which  lovers 


i4o  THE   TORCH 

of  Wordsworth  find  in  his  verse,  what  Arnold  called  the 
healing  power  of  nature.  I  do  not  myself  see  any  healing 
power  of  nature  in  such  instances  as  Michael,  or  Ruth, 
or  the  affliction  of  Margaret;  there  are  wounds  which  na 
ture  cannot  heal,  and  Wordsworth  was  sensible  of  this: 
he  did  not,  as  Arnold  says  he  did,  look  on  "the  cloud  of 
mortal  destiny"  and  put  it  by;  no  English  poet  can.  But 
it  is  true  that  in  the  life-long  appeal  that  Wordsworth's 
verse  makes  especially  to  the  sober  and  aging  mind  by 
virtue  of  its  equable  temper,  its  moral  strength,  its 
simple  human  breadth  of  sympathy,  as  well  as  by  its  su 
preme  rendering  of  the  spiritual  uses  of  nature  in  our 
daily  lives,  its  tranquillizing  power  is  also  a  main  source 
of  its  hold  on  the  general  heart. 

Such,  in  its  phases,  is  the  discipline  of  nature  for  the 
soul  as  Wordsworth  presents  it.  The  poetic  act,  as  I  have 
said,  is  the  going  out  of  the  soul.  If  we  do  not  fare  forth 
on  any  quest  of  the  old  knightly  days,  yet  all  life  consists 
in  such  a  faring  forth,  in  going  out  of  ourselves  into 
some  larger  world,  practically  into  a  club  or  a  church  or 
a  college  or  a  political  party  or  a  nation  —  in  litera 
ture  it  consists  in  going  out  into  the  race-mind,  in  any 
or  all  its  forms,  into  the  life  of  the  race  as  an  idealized 
past,  or  as  a  part  of  present  nature  or  present  humanity. 
I  have  illustrated,  hitherto,  the  imaginative  or  spiritual 
forms  of  history,  and  to-night  the  imaginative  or  spiritual 
forms  of  nature,  in  either  of  which  the  soul  may  take  its 
course  in  the  larger  life,  and  going  out  of  itself  find  the 
freedom  of  the  universe  its  own  —  in  beauty,  reason, 
liberty,  righteousness,  love  —  the  ideal  elements  to 
which  all  paths,  whether  of  history  or  nature,  lead,  when 
imagination  is  die  guide.  It  remains  only  to  illustrate  the 


WORDSWORTH  141 

same  general  theory  by  the  example  of  the  poet  who 
dealt  most  powerfully  with  human  life  as  a  thing  of  the 
present  as  Wordsworth  dealt  most  powerfully  with 
nature  in  the  same  way.  That  is  the  next,  and  final, 
lecture. 


VIII 

SHELLEY 

IN  lecturing  on  Wordsworth  I  did  not  refer  to  his  best- 
known  verses,  the  half-dozen  lines  which  have  more  lu- 
minousness  of  language,  I  think,  than  any  other  English 
words: 

"Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting: 
The  soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  star, 
Hath   had   elsewhere   its  setting, 
And  cometh  from  afar; 
Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 
And  not  in  utter  nakedness, 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 
From  God,  who  is  our  home." 

"Magnificent  poetry,"  said  John  Stuart  Mill,  "but 
very  bad  philosophy."  However  that  may  be,  the  lines 
express  the  idea,  natural  to  all  of  us,  that  we  are  in  some 
sense  heirs  of  past  glory.  We  are  accustomed  to  think  of 
heredity,  as  something  founded  as  it  were  in  past  time 
under  the  operation  of  the  laws  of  natural  selection,  and 
stored  in  us  physically;  and  embryologists  say  that  the 
long  series  of  physical  changes,  in  consequence  of  which 
man  finally  became  in  his  body  the  lord  of  living  crea 
tures,  is  reflected  with  great  rapidity  in  the  human  em 
bryo,  so  that  when  the  body  is  born  it  has  in  fact  passed 
through  the  entire  race-history  in  a  physical  sense.  We 
are  no  sooner  born,  however,  than  we  enter  at  once  on  a 
new  period  of  heredity,  and  acquire  also  with  great  ra- 

143 


144  THE   TORCH 

pidity  the  mental  and  moral  powers  which  originally 
arose  slowly  in  the  race  through  long  ages  of  growth, 
and  we  become  civilized  men  by  thus  appropriating 
swiftly  funds  of  knowledge  and  habits  of  thinking,  feel 
ing  and  acting;  this  is  the  education  which  makes  a  man 
contemporary  with  his  time,  and  perhaps  it  normally 
ends  in  the  fact,  for  most  men,  that  he  does  what  is 
expected  of  him,  and  also  feels  and  thinks  what  is  ex 
pected  of  him.  That  is  the  conventional,  well  brought 
up,  civilized  man. 

There  is  a  third  sphere  of  heredity,  with  which  these 
lectures  have  been  concerned,  in  which  it  is  more  a  mat 
ter  of  choice,  of  temperament  and  vitality,  whether  a 
man  will  avail  himself  of  it,  and  appreciate  it.  Men, 
generally  speaking,  are  but  dimly  aware  of  their  powers 
and  capacities  outside  of  the  practical  sphere;  in  our 
growing  years  we  require  aid  in  discovering  these  ca 
pacities  and  exercising  these  powers;  we  require,  as  it 
were,  some  introduction  to  ourselves,  some  encourage 
ment  to  believe  we  really  are  the  power  of  man  that  we 
are,  and  some  training  in  finding  out  vitally  what  that 
power  of  man  in  us  is.  This  is  our  use  —  the  earliest  — • 
of  literature;  it  interprets  us  to  ourselves.  It  does  this  by 
fixing  our  attention  on  some  things  that  we  might  not 
have  noticed  —  on  natural  things  of  beauty,  and  by  pro 
viding  appropriate  thoughts  and  stimulating  delightful 
emotion  in  respect  to  these  things;  or  it  helps  us  by 
arousing  feeling  for  the  first  time,  perhaps,  with  regard 
to  some  part  of  life,  and  by  giving  noble  expression  to 
such  new  feeling  or  to  some  emotion  hitherto  vague  and 
indeterminate  in  our  bosom;  and  it  especially  aids  us  by 
giving  play  to  our  forces  in  an  imaginary  world,  where 
both  thought  and  feeling  may  have  a  career  which 


SHELLEY  145 

would  be  impossible  to  us  in  our  narrow  world  of  fact. 
The  poverty  of  not  only  the  young,  but  of  most  men,  in 
spiritual  experience,  is  probably  far  greater  than  men 
of  maturity  and  culture  readily  conceive;  it  is  possible 
that  the  forms  of  the  church  even  far  exceed  the  capacity 
of  the  people  to  interpret  them,  just  as  Dante,  or  any 
high  work  of  imagination  would.  The  poets  interpret 
what  is  forming  in  us,  and  offer  new  objects  of  contem 
plation  and  emotion  in  the  imaginary  world;  they  go  but 
a  little  way  before  us,  for  they  can  be  read  and  under 
stood  only  by  the  light  of  our  own  experience;  but 
hand  by  hand,  one  leads  us  to  another  till  we  are  in  the 
presence  of  the  greatest.  I  do  not  know  whether  Shake 
speare  unlocked  his  heart,  as  Wordsworth  said,  with  the 
key  of  the  sonnet;  but  I  know  literature  is  the  key  which 
unlocks  our  own  bosoms  to  ourselves;  though,  in  con 
sequence  of  that  respect  for  the  individual  life  of  the 
soul,  which  is  one  of  the  mysterious  marks  of  man's 
nature,  no  hand  but  our  own  can  turn  the  lock  in  its 
wards.  What  I  described  the  other  night  as  the  poetic 
act  —  the  going  forth  of  the  soul  —  must  be  the  act  of 
the  man  himself;  but  it  is  through  literature  that  the 
paths  make  out  —  the  highways  trodden  by  many  feet. 
As  you  go  out  on  these  great  highways  of  the  soul, 
in  Dante,  in  Shakespeare,  in  Goethe,  a  strange  thing  will 
happen  to  you:  it  will  seem,  in  the  variety  of  new  ideas, 
in  the  flood  of  a  new  feeling  arising  in  you,  that  you  are 
changed  within,  that  you  have  found  almost  a  new  self. 
I  remember  once  when  I  was  studying  the  now  lost  art 
of  wood-engraving,  looking  as  I  was  at  hundreds  of 
woodcuts  constantly,  it  happened  that  when  I  went  out 
to  walk,  I  saw  woodcuts  in  the  landscape;  my  eye  hav 
ing  grown  accustomed  to  certain  line  and  form-arrange- 


146  THE   TORCH 

ments  of  an  artistic  sort,  naturally  picked  out  of  the  gen 
eral  landscape  such  arrangements,  as  you  make  pic 
tures  in  the  fire;  that  is  to  say,  my  eye,  dwelling  on  this 
feature  and  neglecting  that,  composed  the  landscape, 
made  a  picture  of  it.  Now  that  is  the  constant  act  of  life. 
The  human  soul  finds  the  world  a  heterogeneous  mass 
of  impressions;  and  it  attends  to  certain  things,  and 
neglects  others,  and  composes  its  picture  of  life  that 
way;  prefers  certain  memories,  certain  desires,  and  so 
builds  its  own  world,  as  I  have  constantly  said.  It 
applies  this  method  of  composition  even  to  itself.  You 
read  Byron,  and  before  you  know  it  you  see 
yourself  in  Byron's  ways,  you  pick  out  and  favor 
your  Byronic  traits,  you  find  you  are  Byron  in  your 
self-portrait;  or  you  read  Thackeray  and  you  find  your 
self  in  "Arthur  Pendennis";  or,  on  the  broader  scale,  you 
read  Greek  a  good  deal,  Greek  history  and  art  as  well 
as  literature,  and  you  find  you  see  the  world  as  a  Greek 
world  —  or,  again,  as  a  French  world,  as  the  case 
may  be.  The  change  is  a  great  one,  amounting  almost  to 
the  discovery  of  a  new  world  and  yourself  a  new  self  in  it. 
So,  in  Goethe's  life,  the  Italian  journey  and  the  study  of 
the  antique  made  a  new  and  greater  Goethe  of  him.  So 
the  mind  of  Milton,  originally  English,  was  Hebraized, 
Hellenized  and  Italianized.  The  discovery  of  the  new 
self  may  often  be  repeated,  and  each  new  self  enters  into 
and  blends  with  the  old  selves,  and  makes  your  personal 
ity,  or,  at  least,  gives  form  to  it.  So  the  young  Roman 
poet  was  Homer  and  Lucretius  and  the  Alexandrians, 
and  is  Virgil;  so  the  young  Italian  was  Virgil,  and  is 
Dante;  so  the  young  Englishman  was  Theocritus,  was 
Catullus,  was  Keats,  and  is  Tennyson.  What  is  involved, 
you  see,  is  a  kind  of  mental  embryology;  just  as  the  phy- 


SHELLEY  147 

sical  man  sums  up  rapidly  the  age-long  change  from  the 
lowest  to  the  highest  creature-life,  just  as  the  conven 
tional  man  sums  up  in  the  same  way  the  ages  from  bar 
barism  to  civilization  and  spans  them  in  his  education,  so 
here  the  soul  in  its  highest  life  —  that  free  soul  that  I 
have  spoken  of  —  sums  up  and  spans  the  difference  be 
tween  the  ordinary  man  and  the  highest  culture  the  race 
has  ever  known,  and  now  holds  in  his  own  spirit  that  ac 
cumulation,  that  power  of  man,  which  (by  heredity  en 
tered  into  of  his  own  choice)  makes  him  an  heir  of  past 
glory  —  for  the  splendor,  the  leading  light,  the  birth- 
light  of  which  Wordsworth's  verse  is  none  too  extrava 
gant  an  expression. 

Literature,  then,  is  the  key  to  your  own  hearts;  and 
going  out  with  the  poets  you  slowly  or  swiftly  evolve  new 
life  after  new  life,  and  enter  partially  or  fully  on  that 
race-inheritance  which  is  not  the  less  real  and  sure  be 
cause  you  must  reach  out  your  hand  and  take  it  instead 
of  having  it  stored  in  your  nerves  and  senses  at  birth; 
predispositions  to  appropriate  it  are  stored  even  there, 
but  it  is  a  thing  of  the  spirit  and  must  be  gathered  by  the 
spirit  itself.  You  will,  perhaps,  pardon  one  word  of 
warning.  This  process  that  I  have  described  is  a  vital 
process,  a  thing  of  life,  and  it  must  be  real.  There  is  al 
ways  at  work  that  selective  principle  by  virtue  of  which 
you  compose  life  in  the  ways  most  natural  to  you.  It 
may  well  happen  that  some  great  author  does  not  appeal 
to  you,  and  the  reason  is  that  you  have  not  in  yourself 
the  experience  to  read  him  by;  moreover,  being  a  process 
of  life,  this  process  is  one  of  joy,  and  if  any  author,  no 
matter  how  great,  does  not  give  you  pleasure,  the  process 
is  not  taking  place.  Therefore,  do  not  read  books  that, 
after  a  fair  trial,  give  no  pleasure;  do  not  read  books 


148  THE   TORCH 

that  are  too  old,  too  far  in  advance  of  you.  If  they  are 
really  great,  they  will  come  in  time;  but  if,  for  example, 
Dante's  "Inferno"  is  a  weary  place  to  your  feet  and 
your  soul  feels  its  thousand  contaminations,  do  not  stay 
in  such  a  place;  and  so  of  all  other  books  with  names 
of  awe.  Honesty  is  nowhere  more  essential  than  in 
literary  study;  hypocrisy,  there,  may  have  terrible  penal 
ties,  not  merely  in  foolishness,  but  in  misfortune;  and 
to  lie  to  oneself  about  oneself  is  the  most  fatal  lie.  The 
stages  of  life  must  be  taken  in  their  order;  but  finally  you 
will  discover  the  blessed  fact  that  the  world  of  literature 
is  one  of  diminishing  books  —  since  the  greater  are  found 
to  contain  the  less,  for  which  reason  time  itself  sifts  the 
relics  of  the  past  and  leaves  at  last  only  a  Homer  for 
centuries  of  early  Greece,  a  Dante  for  his  entire  age,  a 
Milton  for  a  whole  system  of  thought.  To  understand 
and  appreciate  such  great  writers  is  the  goal;  but  the 
way  is  by  making  honest  use  of  the  authors  that  appeal 
to  us  in  the  most  living  ways.  The  process  that  I  have 
described  is  the  one  by  which  all  men  advance  and  come 
into  their  own  —  men  of  genius  no  less  than  others :  for  I 
cannot  too  often  repeat  the  fundamental  truth  that  the 
nature  and  power  of  the  soul,  its  habits,  its  laws  and 
growth,  are  the  same  in  all  men;  it  sometimes  happens 
that  a  man  who  goes  through  the  process  of  this  high 
spiritual  life,  becoming  more  and  more  deeply,  vari 
ously  and  potently  human,  developing  this  power  of  man 
in  him,  has  also  a  passion  for  accomplishment  —  and 
that  is  one  of  the  marks  of  a  man  of  genius.  Shelley 
was  such  a  man;  and  I  desire  to  present  him,  as  a  man 
with  a  passion  for  accomplishment,  but  also  as  an  extraor 
dinarily  good  illustration  of  the  mode  in  which  a  man, 
through  literature,  evolves  the  highest  self  of  which  man- 


SHELLEY  149 

kind  is  capable,  summing  up  in  his  own  soul  the  final  re 
sults  and  forward  hopes  of  the  race. 

At  the  outset  let  me  guard  against  a  common  mis 
conception.  Shelley  is  too  often  thought  of  as  having 
something  effeminate  in  his  nature.  This  is  due,  in  great 
part,  to  his  portrait  which  with  all  its  beauty,  gives  an 
impression  of  softness,  dreaminess  and  languor;  in  it  there 
is  little  characteristically  masculine.  It  is  also  due, 
in  some  measure,  to  the  preponderance  of  feeling  over 
thought  in  his  verse,  of  imagery  over  idea,  and  in  general 
of  atmosphere  over  form;  his  is  what  we  may  call  a 
color-mind.  The  misconception  of  Shelley  to  which  I 
refer  is  most  boldly  stated  by  Matthew  Arnold,  who 
called  him  an  "ineffectual  angel  beating  his  beautiful 
wings  in  the  void."  Now  nothing  could  be  said  of  Shel 
ley  that  is  more  wrong  than  that.  Shelley  was  a  high- 
spirited,  imaginative  child;  he  was  a  resolute  Eton  boy 
—  who  would  not  fag,  you  remember,  and  being  always 
persistent  in  rebellion,  carried  his  point;  he  rode,  and 
shot  the  covers  in  his  younger  days,  and  was  a  good 
pistol-shot,  all  his  life  delighting  in  the  practice.  He  was 
a  very  practical  man,  in  business  affairs,  after  he  came  of 
age  and  had  learned  something  of  human  nature.  He 
was  the  only  man  who  could  handle  Byron  with  tact  and 
reason.  He  made  a  very  good  will.  In  fact,  his  practi 
cal  instinct  developed  equally  with  his  other  qualities. 
Neither  was  he  a  moping  poet.  He  had  fits  of  high 
spirits  —  of  gaiety;  he  used  habitually  to  sing  to  him 
self  going  about  the  house.  As  boy  and  man,  both,  he 
was  typically  English,  aristocratically  gentle  in  all  his 
ways  and  behavior,  only  nervous,  impulsive,  strong, 
willful,  quick  to  see,  quick  to  respond  —  a  very  deter 
mined  and  active  person;  and,  in  fact,  manly  to  the  full 


150  THE   TORCH 

limit  of  English  manhood.  Perhaps  there  is  always  some 
thing  feminine  in  poetic  beauty  —  the  expression  that 
we  see  typically  in  the  pictures  of  St.  John  the  Beloved; 
but,  apart  from  that  light  on  his  face  and  that  grace  in 
all  his  ways,  Shelley  was  as  manly  a  man  as  they  ever 
make  in  England. 

This  being  premised,  then,  one  reason  why  Shelley  is 
so  good  an  illustration  of  the  development  of  a  modern 
soul  is  the  fact  that  the  record  with  respect  to  him  is  so 
\  complete.  No  human  life,  with  the  exception  possibly  of 
I  Lincoln's,  has  been  so  entirely  exposed  to  our  knowl- 
'  edge,  from  his  earliest  days:  it  seems  as  if  nothing  of 
him  could  ever  die,  no  matter  how  slight,  boyish  and 
trivial  it  might  be.  Thus  it  comes  about  that  we  see  his 
forming  mind  in  its  first  crudities.  He  was  an  eager  boy, 
alive,  awake,  interested,  voracious,  pressing  against  the 
barrier  of  life  for  his  career.  He  began  with  a  taste  for 
the  most  extravagant,  melodramatic  romance  —  what 
was  then  known  as  the  German  tale  of  wonder,  in  which 
the  young  Sir  Walter  Scott  had  also  taken  much  in 
terest;  it  was  what  we  should  describe  as  a  dime-novel 
taste,  except  that  its  characters  were  monks  and  nuns 
and  alchemists  and  wandering  Jews;  Shelley  himself 
wrote  two  romances  and  many  short  poems  and  one  long 
of  this  sort  by  the  time  he  was  sixteen  years  old,  and 
published  them  moreover.  He  was  always  impatient, 
pick  to  act,  to  be  doing  something.  His  imagination 
vas  first  fed  by  this  sensationalism,  and  it  was  also  scien 
tifically  excited  by  the  spectacular  side  of  chemical  ex 
periments;  and  then  he  began  to  think  —  at  first  it  was 
politics  —  such  things  as  the  freedom  of  the  press,  the 
rights  of  Catholics,  reform;  or  it  was  morals  —  such 
things  as  property,  marriage;  or  it  was  metaphysics—- 


SHELLEY  151 

such  things  as  Locke's  sensational  philosophy,  and  the 
ideas  of  the  age.  Radical  ideas  in  all  their  imperfection 
of  newness  filled  his  mind,  reform  took  hold  of  him.  He 
went  to  Ireland  to  make  speeches,  and  made  them,  dis 
tributed  tracts,  subscribed  to  funds,  helped  men  who 
were  prosecuted,  especially  editors,  got  himself  put  under 
observation  as  a  dangerous  character:  and  he  was  not  yet 
twenty-one  years  old. 

There  was  then  little  sign  of  poetic  genius  in  him;  he 
had  always  written  verses,  of  course,  but  there  is  no  line 
of  his  early  writing  that  indicates  any  talent  even  for 
good  verse.  But  his  mind  had  dipped  in  life,  in  thought, 
in  action,  and  was  impregnated  with  all  kinds  of  power; 
especially  his  mind  had  dipped  in  ideas  —  the  ideas  of 
the  perfectibility  of  mankind,  of  experimental  method  in 
science,  of  immediate  social  change  in  England  in  such 
fundamental  things  as  wealth  and  marriage.  He  was 
always  a  person  of  convictions  rather  than  opinions;  he 
wanted  to  live  his  thoughts,  and  together  with  his  great 
causes  he  carried  about  a  full  assortment  of  minor  mat 
ters,  such  as  vegetarianism,  for  example.  In  a  word,  he 
began  as  a  Reformer,  and  he  was  as  complete  an  in 
stance  of  the  type  as  ever  walked  even  the  streets  of 
Boston.  But  he  found  language  more  generally  useful 
than  action  in  standing  forth  for  his  ideas;  and  great 
command  of  language  having  already  accrued  to  him 
through  the  incessant  hammering  of  his  brains  on  these 
ideas,  making  them  malleable  and  portable  and  efficient 
for  human  use,  there  came  to  him  also  that  intenser 
power  of  language,  that  passion  of  expression  which  finds 
its  element  in  noble  cadences  and  vital  images  of  poetry 
as  naturally  as  a  bird  flies  in  the  air.  Yet  the  passage 
from  the  power  of  prose  to  the  power  of  poetry  in 


152  THE   TORCH 

Shelley  is  not  a  very  marked  advance.  What  he  dis 
covered,  in  writing  "Queen  Mab,"  his  first  real  poem, 
was  the  opportunity  that  poetry  gives  for  unfolding  a 
great  deal  of  matter  with  logical  clearness  and  eloquent 
effect,  with  immense  concentration  and  intensity;  what 
he  discovered  was  the  economy  of  poetry,  the  economy, 
that  is,  of  art,  as  a  mode  of  expression;  and,  in  fact,  when 
he  had  written  "Queen  Mab"  he  found  —  to  use  the 
words  I  have  habitually  employed  —  that  in  its  few  hun 
dred  lines  he  had  emptied  his  mind;  he  had  done  what 
genius  always  does.  The  poem,  however,  was  a  Reform 
er's  poem;  it  contained  a  striking  rendering  of  the  image 
of  the  starry  universe,  an  account  of  the  history  of  man's 
progress,  and  some  delicate  poetical  /machinery  in  the 
mere  setting  of  the  piece.  Its  true  subject  was  social 
reform.  Five  years  later  he  emptied  his  mind  a  second 
time  in  the  poem  called  "The  Revolt  of  Islam";  in  the 
interval  he  had  withdrawn  more  from  individual  enter 
prise  and  special  causes  in  the  contemporary  world,  and 
had  come  to  realize  the  power  of  literature,  as  greater 
than  any  he  could  exercise  otherwise,  in  the  bringing  of 
a  better  world  on  earth;  but  he  still  held  to  political  and 
social  reform,  and  wrote,  under  the  example  and  in  the 
stanza  of  Spenser,  this  allegorical  tale  of  the  Revolution 
and  the  successful  reaction  against  it  then  displayed  in 
Europe;  the  poem  remains  an  inferior  poem,  in  conse 
quence  of  its  material  and  method;  but  it  contained  all 
that  was  in  Shelley's  mind  at  the  time,  and  was  written 
in  the  model  and  method  of  what  was  then  to  him  the 
highest  art.  Five  years  again  went  by,  and  he  again 
emptied  his  mind  in  the  "Prometheus  Unbound." 

In  the  interval  great  changes  had  taken  place  in  him. 
He  was  still  further  removed  from  practical  measures  of 


SHELLEY  153 

reform  —  not  that  he  ever  lost  interest  in  them  —  but 
practical  reform  requires  a  machinery  that  he  could  not 
provide;  and  he  now  more  fully  recognized  the  power  of 
ideas,  of  eloquence  to  stir  men's  hearts,  of  poetry  to  em 
body  images  of  the  ideal  with  mastering  force;  and  es 
pecially  he  recognized  the  fact  that  practical  reform  is  a 
thing  that  from  moment  to  moment  results  from  ab 
stract  principles  which  have  an  eternal  being.  More 
over,  he  had  fallen  in  with  Greek,  in  this  interval,  with 
Greek  choral  poetry  on  the  one  hand,  and  with  Greek 
Platonic  philosophy  on  the  other.  His  mind  was  Hellen- 
ized;  like  a  dark  cloud,  his  soul  approached  the  dark 
clouds  of  ^schylus  and  Plato;  and  the  contact  was  an 
electrical  discharge  of  power:  the  flash  of  that  discharge 
was  the  "Prometheus  Unbound."  Furthermore,  Shelley's 
poetical  faculty  had  developed  marvelous  brilliancy,  sen 
sitiveness,  color,  atmosphere,  sublimity  of  form,  suf 
fusion  of  beauty,  and,  all  this,  with  a  lyrical  volume,  in 
tensity  and  penetration  of  tone,  which  his  earlier  verse 
had  not  shown.  He  had  become,  under  the  play  of  life 
upon  him,  a  poet,  so  throbbing  with  the  high  lif^  of  the 
soul  that  he  seemed  like  an  imprisoned  spirrf,  with 
the  voice  of  the  spirit,  calling  to  men  like  deep  unto  deep; 
and  the  world  seemed  to  lie  before  him  transfigured, 
wearing  a  garment  of  outward  beauty  like  a  new  morn 
ing,  and,  in  the  human  breast  clothed  with  freedom, 
nobility,  hope,  such  as  belongs  to  the  forms  of  millennial 
days.  Shelley  had  gathered  into  his  heart  the  power  of 
man  that  I  have  been  speaking  of,  and  stands  forth  as  its 
transcendent  example  in  his  age.  He  had  dropped  from 
him,  like  hour-glass  sand,  the  specific  things  of  earlier 
days,  things  of  the  free  press,  of  Catholic  rights,  of  put 
ting  reform  to  the  vote,  of  national  association,  of 


154  THE   TORCH 

Welsh  embankments  —  all  things  of  detail;  and  also  all 
lesser  principles  of  property  or  marriage  laws;  he  had 
reached  the  fountains  of  all  these  in  the  single  prin 
ciple  of  the  love  of  man  for  man,  which  alone  he  was 

I  now  interested  to  preach  and  spread.  He  had  let  go, 
too,  of  all  revolutionary  violence,  as  anything  more  than 
a  secondary  means  of  reform,  and  he  clung  to  the  prin 
ciple  of  patience,  of  forgiveness,  of  non-resistance,  as 
the  appointed  means  of  triumph,  as  I  have  already  il 
lustrated  in  treating  of  the  "Prometheus."  "I  have," 
he  wrote,  in  his  preface,  "a  passion  for  reforming  the 
world":  it  was  his  fundamental  energy  of  life;  but  re 
form  for  him  was  not  now  to  be  discriminated  from  the 
preaching  of  Christ's  Gospel.  The  boy  who  had  begun 
with  a  dime-novel  taste  had  come  into  such  etherealized 
powers  of  imagination  that  the  poem  of  "Epipsychid- 
ion"  is,  perhaps,  the  extreme  instance  of  ideal  purity  in 
English;  the  boy  who  had  begun  with  Locke's  sensa 
tionalism  had  come  to  be  the  most  Platonic  man  of  his 
age  in  his  spirituality:  the  boy  who  had  begun  with  an 
indignant  challenge  to  orthodoxy  had  come  to  be  the 
voice  of  Christianity  itself  in  its  highest  forms  of  moral 
command;  the  boy  who  began  as  the  practical  reformer 
had  come  to  be  the  poet,  smiting  the  source  of  all  re- 

*  form  in  the  spirit  itself,  and  using  all  his  powers  of 
thought,  imagination,  learning,  and  all  the  means  of  art, 
to  set  forth  the  ideals  of  the  spirit  in  their  eternal  forms. 
He  had  passed  through  politics,  philosophy,  religion  — 
through  English  and  French  and  Greek  ideas  —  through 

'  Italian  and  Spanish  imaginative  art,  and  he  now  summed 
in  himself  that  power  of  man  which  he  had  lived  through 
in  others  —  it  had  become  his,  it  had  become  himself. 
In  the  whole  course  of  this  development  no  trait  is  more 


SHELLEY  155 

important  to  observe,  than  Jiis  jmarvelous_inlfillectual__ 
honesty;  he  took  only  what  at  any  moment  was  capable 
of  living  in  him;  he  gave  it  free  course  in  his  life,  outlived 
it,  transmigrated  from  it,  and  came  to  the  next  stage  of 
higher  life,  and  so  won  on  to  the  end. 

The  development  of  Shelley  was  as  rapid  as  it  was 
complete;  he  was  not  yet  thirty  years  old  when  he  had 
become  the  center  of  human  power  that  he  was,  a  center 
so  mighty  that  it  would  be  two  generations  before  its 
influence  in  the  world,  and  its  comparative  brilliancy 
among  English  poets,  could  begin  to  be  measured.  His 
genius,  we  now  see,  was  that  of  a  double  personality;  he 
had,  so  to  speak,  two  selves.  First,  and  primary  in  him 
was  his  social  self,  his  public  self,  that  by  which  he  was 
a  part  of  mankind,  was  interested  in  man,  felt  for  man, 
suffered  in  man's  general  wretchedness  in  Europe,  brooded 
over  his  destiny,  formulated  principles  for  his  regenera 
tion,  and  lived  in  the  hopes,  the  faith,  the  struggle  of 
mankind.  The  greater  works  of  his  mind,  which  he 
elaborated  with  most  conscious  aim  to  serve  the  world, 
were  the  ones  I  have  named,  "Queen  Mab,"  "The  Re 
volt  of  Islam"  and  "Prometheus  Unbound,"  with  the 
later,  almost  episodical  choric  drama,  called  "Hellas," 
whose  subject  was  the  Greek  Revolution  then  going  on: 
all  these  were  the  expression  of  his  social  self.  In  early 
life,  so  absorbed  was  he  in  politics,  morals,  and  phil 
osophy,  that  he  hardly  realized  he  had  any  life  except  in 
these;  but,  as  years  came  on  him  with  their  load,  he  de 
veloped  a  personal  self,  private  and  individual,  the  Shel 
ley  who  was  alone  in  the  world,  on  whom  fell  the  burden 
of  discouragement,  the  penalty  of  error,  the  blows  of 
fortune  and  circumstance,  the  wounds  of  the  heart;  and  it 
was  in  this  self  that  his  poetic  power  was  first  put  forthp 


156  THE    TORCH 

his  sensitiveness,  his  response  to  nature,  his  lyrical  en 
thusiasm,  his  aspiration,  his  melancholy;  and  he  carried 
over  these  powers  to  the  expression  of  his  social  self,  as 
he  carried  over  all  his  faculties  and  resources  to  that 
cause.  But  the  home  of  his  poetic  genius  was  in  his  per 
sonal  life;  and  the  poems  by  which  he  is  known  as  an 
artist,  as  a  mere  human  spirit  without  reference  to  any 
special  application  of  its  life-work,  are  those  in  which  the 
personal  self  is  directly  and  spontaneously  expressed,  the 
"Alastor"  being  the  first,  and  after  it  the  "Adonais" 
and  the  "Epipsychidion" ;  and  in  addition  to  these  longer 
pieces,  the  short  lyrics,  odes  and  stanzas,  and  the  frag 
ments,  all  of  which  are  effusions,  overflowings  of  his 
own  heart.  If  the  sense  of  his  greatness  is  most  sup 
ported  by  the  larger  creative  works  of  his  imagination,  he 
is  most  endeared  to  men  by  these  little  poems  of  love  and 

(sorrow,  of  affection,  of  joy  in  nature,  and  of  human  regret. 
The  most  poignant  of  them  are  those  in  which  the  aspi 
ration  is  itself  a  lament  —  and  in  them  is  the  intimacy  of 
the  poet's  heart.  It  is  impossible  to  close  one's  eyes  to 
the  fact  that  Shelley,  wholly  unappreciated  as  he  was 
by  the  public,  or  in  private  for  that  matter,  was  deeply 
dejected  in  his  last  years;  the  personal,  the  artistic  self, 
was  always  a  relatively  increasing  part  of  his  life,  and  he 
occasionally  attempted  great  works,  like  the  "Cenci"  or 
"Charles  II,"  which  had  no  social  significance.  Had  he 
lived,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  he  would  have  become 
more  purely  an  artist,  a  creative  poet,  conceiving  the 
cause  of  mankind  more  and  more  largely  as  a  spiritual 
rather  than  an  institutional  cause,  a  cause  of  the  re 
birth  of  the  soul  itself  rather  than  of  the  re-birth  of  na- 
y  tions.  In  his  personal  self  one  principle  reigned  supreme 
\  — the  idea  of  love;  love  guided  all  his  actions,  and  was 


SHELLEY  157 

the  impulse  of  his  being  —  love  in  all  its  forms,  personal, 
friendly,  humane;  by  that  selective  principle  that  I  spoke 
of  he  saw  life  as  a  form  of  love.  It  is  here  that  the  true 
contact  occurs  between  his  personal  and  his  social  self, 
for  he  made  love  —  the  love  of  man  for  man  —  the 
principle  of  society  regenerated  as  he  pictured  it  in  the 
"Prometheus."  And  again,  he  made  love,  in  the  "Ad- 
onais"  the  principle  of  Divine  being  —  that  Power, 

"Which  wields  the  world  with  never- wearied  love, 
Sustains  it  from  beneath  and  kindles  it  above." 

Wordsworth  found  the  presence  of  God  in 

"The  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air"  — 

primarily  as  something  external;  Shelley  found  it  pri 
marily  as  something  known  most  intimately  and  clearly 
in  his  own  heart. 

A  poet  of  really  high  rank  is  seldom  a  very  simple 
being;  he  is  made  up  of  many  elements,  some  one  of 
which  usually  has  the  power  of  genius,  and  when  that  is 
at  work  in  him,  he  is  great.    In  Shelley  there  are  at  least 
three  such  elements;  he  was  a  poet  of  nature,  and  es-  j 
pecially  he  had  the  power  to  vivify  nature  almost  as  the  j 
Greeks  did,  to  give  it  new  mythological  being,  as  in  "The  \ 
Cloud."    He  was  also  a  poet  of  man  —  the  thought  of 
man  was  like  a  flame  in  his  bosom.    And  he  was  a  poet  of 
his  own  heart,  putting  his  own  private  life  into  song.    A 
poet  is  greatest  when  he  can  bring  all  his  powers  to  bear 
in  one  act  —  then  he  gives  all  of  himself  at  once.     Shel 
ley  most  nearly  did  this,  I  think,  in  the  "Ode  to  the  West 
Wind."    The  poem  arises  out  of  nature,  in  the  triple  as 
pect  of  earth,  air  and  ocean,  held  in  artistic  unity  by  the 


1 58  THE   TORCH 

West  Wind  blowing  through  them;  and  it  becomes  at  its 
climax  a  poem  of  the  hopes  of  mankind,  and  Shelley 
himself  as  the  center  of  them,  like  a  priest.  So  he 
invokes  the  West  Wind  to  which  by  his  act  he  has  given 
an  imaginative  being  as  if  it  were  the  spirit  of  the  whole 
visible  world  of  air,  earth  and  sea: 

"Be  thou,  spirit  fierce, 
My  spirit,  —  Be  thou  me,  impetuous  one! 
Drive  my  dead  thoughts  over  the  universe 
Like  withered  leaves  to  quicken  a  new  birth! 
And,  by  the  incantation  of  this  verse, 
Scatter,  as  from  an  unextinguished  hearth, 
Ashes  and  sparks,  —  my  words  among  mankind." 

"My  words  among  mankind."  That  is  not  the  voice  of 
an  ineffectual  angel.  It  is  the  rallying  cry  of  a  great  and 
gallant  soul  on  the  field  of  our  conflict.  When  you  read 
the  "Ode  to  the  West  Wind,"  see  in  it  the  great  ele 
ments  of  nature  grandly  presented  and  the  cause  of  man 
kind  in  its  large  passion,  and  the  spirit  of  Shelley  like 
the  creative  plastic  stress  itself  that 

"Sweeps  through  the  dull  dense  world,  compelling  there 
All  new  successions  to  the  form  they  wear." 

Such  are  some  of  the  ways  in  which  Shelley  entered  into 
the  life  of  men  as  Wordsworth  entered  into  the  life  of 
nature,  and  leads  the  way  for  those  who  have  hearts  to 
follow.  Dip  in  life,  as  he  did,  with  honesty,  with  enthusi 
asm,  with  faith,  and  whatever  be  the  starting  point  at 
last  you  emerge  on  those  craggy  uplands  of  abstract  and 
austere  beauty  and  reason  and  righteousness  and  liberty 
and  love  — 

"Whereto  our  God  himself  is  sun  and  moon;"  — 


SHELLEY  159 

•* 

the  fountain-heads  whence  flow  all  the  streams  of  the 
ordered  life  of  the  vale.  I  have  illustrated  this  process  of 
life  by  the  idea  of  the  eye  composing  a  picture;  so  the 
soul  selects  its  most  cherished  desires  and  memories, 
and  comes  to  be  the  soul  of  an  artist,  or  a  soldier,  or  an 
engineer,  as  the  case  may  be.  Let  me  vary  the  illustra 
tion,  and  say  that  our  problem  is,  in  the  presence  of  the 
world  before  us  lying  dull  and  crude  and  meaningless  at 
first,  to  charge  certain  things  in  it  with  our  own  thought 
and  feeling,  and  so  to  give  them  meaning;  thus  our 
familiar  rooms  of  the  house,  and  the  fields  round  about  it, 
for  example,  gain  a  power  and  meaning  which  is  for  us 
only;  the  stranger  does  not  feel  the  welcome  that  the 
trees  of  the  dooryard  give  to  him  who  was  born  under 
them.  But  we  find,  as  our  minds  go  out  into  life,  things 
already  charged  with  emotion  and  thought,  like  the  flag 
or  the  cross;  and  when  the  flag  is  brought  to  our  lips  and 
the  cross  to  our  breast,  we  feel  the  stored  emotion  of  the 
nation's  life,  the  stored  emotion  of  Christian  sorrow,  in 
the  very  touch  of  the  symbol;  life  —  the  life  of  the  world 
pours  into  us  with  power.  And  we  find,  again,  ideas  that 
are  similarly  already  clothed  with  might  —  charged  with 
the  hearts  of  whole  nations  that  have  prayed  for  them, 
with  precious  lives  that  have  died  for  them: 

"Names  are  there,  nature's  sacred  watchwords"  — 

liberty,  truth,  justice;  and,  if  we  possess  our  souls  of 
them,  the  power  of  man  flows  into  us  as  if  we  held  elec 
tric  handles  in  our  palms;  beaded  on  the  poet's  verse, 
dropt  from  the  lips  of  some  rapt  orator,  they  thrill  us  — 
and  the  instancy,  the  fervor,  the  inspired  power  that 
then  wakes  along  our  nerves  is,  we  feel,  the  most  au 
thentic  sign  that  we  are  immortal  spirits.  And  men 


160  THE   TORCH 

there  are,  who  seem  like  nuclei  and  central  ganglions  of 
these  ideas,  whose  personality  is  so  charged  with  their 
power  that  we  idolize  and  almost  worship  them  —  what 
we  call  hero-worship.  Such  a  man  Shelley  was,  and  is, 
to  me.  I  remember  as  it  were  yesterday,  when  I  was  a 
freshman  at  Harvard,  the  very  hour  in  that  cold  library 
when  my  hand  first  closed  round  the  precious  volume; 
and  to  this  day  the  fragrant  beauty  of  that  blossomed 
May  is  as  the  birth  of  a  new  life;  and  when  I  read  Words 
worth's  ode, — 

"Not  in  entire  forgetfulness 
And  not  in  utter  nakedness, 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come"  — 

I  think  of  those  first  days  with  Shelley.  To  others  it  is 
some  other  book,  some  other  man  —  Carlyle,  Emerson, 
Goethe  —  whoever  it  may  be :  for  the  selective  principle 
always  operates  to  bring  a  man  to  his  own;  but  in 
whatever  way  it  comes  about,  the  seeking  mind  gets  con 
nected  with  these  men,  books,  ideas,  symbols,  through 
which  it  receives  the  stored  race-force  of  mankind;  so 
each  of  us,  passing  through  the  forms  of  developing  life, 
receives  the  revelation  of  the  world  and  of  himself,  grasps 
the  world  and  is  able  to  express  himself  through  it,  to 
utter  his  nature,  not  in  language,  but  in  being,  in  idea 
and  emotion,  and  becomes  more  and  more  completely 
man,  working  toward  that  consummation,  which  I  began 
by  placing  before  you,  of  the  time  when  the  best  that  has 
anywhere  been  in  the  world  shall  be  the  portion  of  every 
man  born  into  it. 

I  must  crave  your  patience  for  yet  a  final  thought, 
which,  though  it  may  be  hard  to  realize,  yet,  if  it  be  re 
alized  only  at  moments,  sheds  light  upon  our  days.  Of 


SHELLEY  161 

•«. 

all  the  webs  of  illusion  in  which  our  mortality  is  en 
meshed,  time  is  the  greatest  illusion.  This  race-store, 
our  inheritance,  of  which  I  have  been  speaking,  which 
vitalized  in  our  lives  is  race-power,  is  not  a  dead  thing,  a 
thing  of  the  past;  all  that  it  has  of  life  with  us  is  living. 
Plato  is  not  a  thing  of  the  past,  twenty  centuries  ago; 
but  a  mood,  a  spirit,  an  approach  to  supreme  beauty,  by 
the  pathway  of  human  love;  Spenser's  "Red  Cross 
Knight"  is  not  an  Elizabethan  legend,  but  the  image  of 
the  Christian  life  to-day;  and  the  hopes  of  man  were  not 
burnt  away  in  the  fire  that  consumed  Shelley's  mortal 
remains  by  the  bright  Mediterranean  waves,  nor  do  they 
sleep  with  his  ashes  by  the  Roman  wall;  they  live  in  us. 
I  have  made  much  of  the  idea  that  all  history  is  at  last 
absorbed  in  imagination,  and  takes  the  form  of  the  ideal 
in  literature;  it  is  a  present  ideal.  We  dip  in  life,  as 
Shelley  did,  and  we  put  on  in  our  own  personality  these 
forms  of  which  I  have  been  speaking  all  along  —  forms 
of  liberty,  forms  of  beauty,  forms  of  reason  —  of  right 
eousness,  of  kindliness,  of  love,  of  courtesy,  of  charity, 
of  joy  in  nature,  of  approach  to  God  —  and  these  forms 
being  present  with  us,  eternity  is  with  us;  they  have  been 
shaped  in  past  ages  by  the  chosen  among  men  —  by  poets, 
by  saints,  by  dreamers  —  by  Plato,  by  Virgil,  and  Dante, 
by  Shakespeare  and  Goethe,  who  live  through  them  in  us; 
except  in  so  far  as  they  so  live  in  us,  they  are  dust  and 
ashes:  Babylon  is  not  more  a  grave.  But  these  ideal 
forms  of  thought  and  emotion,  charged  with  the  life  of 
the  human  spirit  through  ages,  are  here  and  now,  a 
part  of  present  life,  of  our  lives,  as  our  lives  take  on  these 
forms;  casting  their  shadows  on  time,  they  raise  us,  as  by 
the  hands  of  angels,  up  the  paths  of  being  —  we  are  re 
leased  from  the  temporal,  we  lay  hold  on  eternity,  and 


1 62  THE   TORCH 

entering  on  our  inheritance  as  heirs  of  man's  past  glory, 
we  begin  to  lead  that  life  of  the  free  soul  among  the  things 
of  the  spirit,  which  is  the  climax  of  man's  race-life  and 
the  culmination  of  the  soul's  long  progress  through 
time. 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 


Eight  lectures  on  Poetic  Energy,  delivered 
before  the  Lowell   Institute  of   Boston,  1906 


I 

POETIC  MADNESS 

THROUGH  all  the  space  of  years,  from  the  morning 
of  the  world  almost  till  yesterday,  the  poets  were  a  race 
apart;  mortal,  they  yet  shed  a  celestial  gleam;  dying, 
they  remained  deathless;  more  than  any  other  class  of 
men  they  typified  immortality.  The  Greeks,  those  origi 
nators  of  the  intellectual  life,  fixed  for  us  the  idea  of 
the  poet.  He  was  a  divine  man;  more  sacred  than  the 
priest,  who  was  at  best  an  intermediary  between  men 
and  the  gods,  but  in  the  poet  the  god  was  present  and 
spoke.  "For,"  said  Socrates  to  Ion,  "not  by  art  does 
the  poet  sing,  but  by  power  divine.  .  .  .  God  takes 
away  the  minds  of  poets  and  uses  them  as  His  ministers, 
as  He  also  uses  diviners  and  holy  prophets,  in  order  that 
we  who  hear  them  may  know  them  to  be  speaking  not 
of  themselves  who  utter  these  priceless  words  in  a  state 
of  unconsciousness,  but  that  God  Himself  is  the  speaker, 
and  that  through  them  He  is  conversing  with  us."  The 
poets  themselves  give  the  same  testimony.  Spenser  says 
that  poetry  is  "no  art,  but  a  divine  gift  and  heavenly 
instinct,  not  to  be  gotten  by  labour  and  learning,  but 
adorned  with  both;  and  poured  into  the  witte  by  a  cer 
tain  Enthousiasmos  and  celestiall  inspiration."  Shelley 
has  the  same  doctrine  in  mind  when  he  says,  "Poetry 
redeems  from  decay  the  visitations  of  the  divinity  in 
man."  Poetic  energy,  according  to  this  view,  is  inspira- 

165 


1 66  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

tion,  anciently  conceived  as  a  madness  taking  possession 
of  the  poet,  and  in  more  modern  times  as  a  divine  prompt 
ing  of  the  reasonable  soul.  This  is  the  unbroken  tradi 
tion  of  literature  from  the  beginning  with  respect  to  the 
nature  of  poetic  power. 

It  is  to  be  feared,  however,  that  this  doctrine  to-day 
has  little  convincing  force.  Even  in  the  words  of  Soc 
rates  there  is  a  suspicion  of  irony,  and  perhaps  Spenser 
and  Shelley  put  more  faith  in  their  own  words  than  ever 
their  readers  have  done.  Yet  when  all  reservations  have 
been  made,  there  remain  in  the  thoughts  of  all  of  us 
respecting  poetry  some  glimmerings  and  decays,  at  least, 
of  the  idea  of  inspiration.  It  is  the  vogue  nowadays, 
when  any  question  is  asked  with  regard  to  the  soul, 
to  apply  first  to  the  anthropologist;  and,  indeed,  to 
inquire  concerning  the  history  of  an  idea  is  one  of  the 
best  means  to  inform  ourselves  of  its  meaning.  It  might 
be  pleasant  to  enter  the  charmed  circle  of  the  Greek 
myth,  to  listen  for  snatches  of  Lityerses'  song  like  music 
before  dawn,  and  have  sight  of  Orpheus,  a  shining  figure 
on  the  border  of  the  morning;  but  such  a  procedure 
would  only  discredit  our  argument.  It  is  necessary  to 
go  to  the  anthropologist  and  be  wise. 

What  does  the  student  of  primitive  man  tell  of  poetry 
at  her  birth?  In  place  of  the  divine  child,  upon  whose 
mouth  bees  clung  in  the  cradle,  what  does  the  anthro 
pologist  show  us?  He  shows  us  the  dancing  horde. 
"On  festal  occasions,"  says  a  recent  writer,  "the  whole 
horde  meets  by  night  round  the  camp-fire  for  a  dance. 
Men  and  women  alternating  form  a  circle;  each  dancer 
lays  his  arms  about  the  necks  of  his  two  neighbors,  and 
the  entire  ring  begins  to  turn  to  the  right  or  to  the  left, 
while  all  the  dancers  stamp  strongly  and  in  rhythm  the 


POETIC   MADNESS  167 

foot  that  is  advanced,  and  drag  after  it  the  other  foot. 
Now  with  drooping  heads  they  press  closer  and  closer 
together;  now  they  widen  the  circle.  Throughout  the 
dance  resounds  a  monotonous  song."  The  song  is  some 
times  one  sound  interminably  repeated;  sometimes  it 
is  more  extended,  as, '  for  example,  the  words  "Good 
hunting,"  or  "Now  we  have  something  to  eat,"  or 
"Brandy  is  good."  In  the  undifferentiated,  homogene 
ous  social  state  called  the  horde,  there  was  no  poet, 
just  as  there  were  no  other  men  with  particular  callings; 
but  all  the  horde  were  poets;  and  this,  which  I  have 
read,  was  their  poetry.  Such  is  the  anthropologist's  ac 
count,  and  it  is  a  true  account.  Indeed,  it  is  plain  from 
the  evidence  that  primitive  men  found  many  utilities 
in  rhythmical  expression.  Rhythm  was  used  to  mark 
time  in  joint  labor  and  on  the  march,  as  it  is  still 
employed  by  sailors,  boatmen,  and  soldiers;  the  songs 
of  labor  and  of  war  have  this  origin;  and  in  that  prime 
val  time,  when  language  was  hardly  formed  upon  the 
lips  of  men,  rhythm  was  the  means  by  which  the  joint 
expression  of  emotion  was  effected  on  festive  occasions. 
Rhythm  was,  so  far  as  expression  was  concerned,  the 
social  bond.  Lying  on  the  sands  at  the  base  of  the 
pyramids,  or  amid  the  ruins  of  Luxor,  as  the  afternoon 
wore  on,  I  have  heard  the  chant  begin  among  the  throng 
of  workmen,  and  as  they  hurried  by  with  their  baskets 
of  earth  it  was  no  fancy  for  me  to  believe  that  in  their 
shrill,  unceasing,  and  ever  louder  cry  I  listened  to  the 
cradle  hymn  of  poetry. 

If  one  looks  at  the  matter  more  closely,  the  seeming 
gap  between  these  sharply  opposed  conceptions  of  the 
divine  poet  and  the  singing  and  dancing  horde  begins 
to  disappear.  Greek  tradition  itself  gives  the  clew  to 


1 68  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

their  reconciliation.  Socrates,  in  the  passage  which  I 
have  quoted,  compares  the  poet  to  the  wild  Bacchic 
revellers  in  their  frenzy  —  that  is,  to  what  is  no  more 
nor  less  than  the  singing  horde  of  Dionysus  in  their 
sacred  orgy.  The  history  of  the  Greek  stage  shows 
clearly  how  tragedy  was  developed  from  an  original  joint 
exercise  about  the  altar  of  Dionysus,  in  which  all  united; 
it  was  only  by  the  gradual  change  of  time  that  the 
assembly  fell  apart  into  the  audience  on  one  side  and 
the  performers  on  the  other,  and  even  then,  you  know, 
the  chorus  remained  as  the  delegate  of  the  whole  as 
sembly  until  in  turn  it  also  yielded  to  the  ever  increas 
ing  function  of  the  actors,  and  theatrical  individuality 
in  dramatic  performances  was  fully  developed.  With 
out  entering  upon  detail,  the  Greek  tradition  indicates 
the  evolution  of  poetry  from  its  social  form  as  the  joint 
rhythm  of  the  horde  to  its  individual  form  as  the  song 
of  the  divine  poet  who  held  all  others  silent  when  he 
discoursed.  In  this  evolution  the  poetic  energy  itself 
remains  the  same,  however  much  its  form  may  change; 
whatever  explanation  may  be  given,  whether  it  be  re 
garded  as  divine  or  human,  the  phenomenon  is  continuous 
and  identical. 

The  first  radical  trait  of  poetry  throughout  is  the 
presence  of  emotion;  and  this  to  so  marked  a  degree 
that  it  is  characteristically  described  as  madness.  Civi 
lized  men  sometimes  forget  the  immense  sphere  of  emo 
tion  in  the  history  of  the  race.  It  is  still  familiar  to  us 
in  the  actions  of  mobs,  in  the  blind  fury  or  blind  panic 
to  wliich  swarms  of  men  are  subject.  In  history  we 
read  of  such  emotion  seizing  on  the  people  as  in  the 
time  of  the  Flagellants,  who  went  about  scourging  them 
selves  in  the  streets,  or  generally  in  periods  of  revolu- 


POETIC   MADNESS  169 

tionary  enthusiasm.  Such  emotion  is  known  to  us,  also, 
in  orgiastic  or  devotional  dances,  in  the  old-fashioned 
revivals,  and  in  the  fury  of  battle  that  possesses  every 
nation  when  its  chiefs  have  declared  war.  This  is  the 
broad  emotional  power  in  the  race  that  is  the  fountain 
of  poetry.  Emotion  is  far  older  than  intellect  in  human 
life;  and  even  now  reason  plays  but  a  faint  and  falter 
ing  part  in  human  affairs.  If  in  the  civilized  portions 
of  the  world  the  ungoverned  outburst  is  less  than  it  was, 
or  seems  less,  it  is  mainly  because  in  civilization  emotion 
has  found  fixed  channels. 

This  emotion,  which  is  the  fountain  of  poetry,  it  should 
be  observed,  is  the  broad  fund  of  life;  it  is  nothing 
individual;  it  is  always  shared  emotion.  The  second 
radical  trait  of  poetic  energy,  therefore,  is  that  it  is  social. 
The  poet,  however  aloof  he  may  be,  is  always  in  com 
pany  with  the  hearts  that  beat  with  his  own  heart,  and 
like  Saadi  — 

"He  wants  them  all, 
Nor  can  dispense 
With  Persia  for  his  audience:" 

for  he  is  the  voice  of  his  people.  In  times  past,  and  on 
the  great  scale  of  literary  history,  this  is  evident;  nor 
is  it  less  true  of  the  most  solitary  lyrical  poet  of  modern 
days  than  of  the  old  dramatist  or  epic  bard;  for  even 
that  most  secretive  poetry,  which  we  fitly  say  is  "over 
heard,"  has  its  value  in  proportion  to  its  being  overheard 
by  the  like-minded,  whose  minds  it  fills.  The  third  trait 
of  poetic  energy,  as  seen  in  its  continuous  phenomena, 
is  that  it  is  controlled  emotion.  Rhythm  is  used  from 
the  beginning  to  control  movement,  as  when  two  men 
strike  alternately  in  a  common  work;  or,  as  when  rowers 


iyo  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

dip  their  oars  together;  or,  as  when  the  throng  dances 
in  chorus;  and  at  the  same  time  it  governs  the  unisons 
of  the  emotional  cries.  Rhythm  is  the  germ  of  art,  its 
simplest  form;  and  poetic  art  as  distinguished  from 
poetic  energy  may  be  defined  as  the  principle  of  con 
trol  in  the  emotion  in  play.  Poetic  energy,  then,  as  it 
appears  historically,  is  shared  and  controlled  emotion; 
it  is  primordial  energy  rising  out  of  the  vague  of  feeling; 
it  is  social;  and  for  the  principle  of  its  control  in  general 
there  is  no  better  word  than  music,  or  harmony  in  the 
old,  broad  sense  of  that  term. 

It  is  one  of  the  difficulties,  I  fancy,  of  the  staid  New 
England  folk  who  sit  at  the  feet  of  Emerson,  to  find  the 
sage  affirming  that  the  perfect  state  of  life  is  ecstasy. 
From  the  beginning  to  the  end  he  repeatedly  announced 
this  law;  and  by  ecstasy  he  meant  precisely  what  the 
Greeks  meant  by  poetic  madness.  In  his  essay  on  poetry 
he  puts  his  finger  on  the  ailing  place  when  he  says 
that  American  poetry  lacks  abandonment,  and  he  ex 
tends  the  diagnosis  to  all  American  life  when  he  exclaims: 
"O  celestial  Bacchus!  drive  them  mad  —  this  multitude 
of  vagabonds,  hungry  for  eloquence,  hungry  for  poetry, 
starving  for  symbols,  perishing  for  want  of  electricity 
to  vitalize  this  too  much  pasture,  and  in  the  long  delay 
indemnifying  themselves  with  the  false  wine  of  alcohol, 
of  politics,  or  of  money."  In  many  passages  Emerson 
thus  pleads  for  the  principle  of  the  dervish,  the  maenad, 
the  god-intoxicated  man,  in  whatever  sphere  of  life;  the 
man  who  is  self-abandoned  to  the  energy  of  life  that 
wells  up  within  him,  and  in  being  "passion's  slave"  finds 
his  illumination  and  his  enfranchisement. 

I  know  that  it  is  common  when  the  masters  give  ex 
pression  to  such  bewildering  ideas  to  say  that  they  did 


POETIC   MADNESS  171 

not  mean  what  they  said,  and  to  explain  away  the  words 
by  a  liberal  application  of  common  sense.  But  it  is 
more  likely  that  the  masters  do  not  say  half  what  they 
mean;  for  in  such  souls,  living  in  a  white  heat  of  convic 
tion,  expression  lags  far  behind  their  faith.  It  is  but  just 
to  Emerson,  however,  to  add  that  he  had  adopted  the 
idea  from  others,  and  he  naively  remarks  that  it  is  singu 
lar  that  our  faith  in  ecstasy  exists  in  spite  of  our  almost 
total  inexperience  of  it.  The  doctrine  itself,  neverthe 
less,  is  one  of  the  most  persistent  of  human  beliefs,  ,and 
is  always  springing  up  in  some  quarter  of  the  world. 

We  have  to  do  only  with  the  fact  that  from  the  begin 
ning  to  a  late  period  of  civilization  poetic  genius  was 
identified  with  a  certain  madness.  The  poet  was  the 
heir  of  the  wild  and  frenzied  bands  of  Dionysus.  In 
this  case,  however,  the  madness  is  slowly  qualified. 
Whether  poetic  ecstasy  is  divinely  inspired,  whether  it 
be  the  most  perfect  state  of  life,  or  whether  it  is  only 
a  survival  from  that  period  of  exaltation  which  may 
have  accompanied  man's  escape  from  brutish  life,  is 
not  at  present  the  question.  It  is  not  characterized  by 
an  unbalanced  or  diseased  reason  or  by  any  temporary 
fury  and  aberration;  it  is  characterized  rather  by  a 
suspension  of  reason.  The  plain  truth  appears  to  be 
no  more  than  that,  in  proportion  to  the  degree  of  emo 
tional  excitement,  the  operation  of  the  mind  tends  to 
become  instinctive,  and  in  the  crisis  of  passion  becomes 
wholly  so.  The  two  traits  that  most  struck  observers 
of  poetic  inspiration  were  its  involuntary  and  its  un 
conscious  character.  The  will  is  laid  to  sleep,  and  the 
mind  works  without  conscious  self-direction.  Any  lyri 
cal  poet,  like  Goethe,  for  example,  is  familiar  with  the 
process;  he  looks  upon  some  scene  with  no  thought  of  writ- 


172  THE   INSPIRATION   OF    POETRY 

ing  verses,  and  suddenly,  out  of  nowhere,  the  song  sings 
itself  in  his  brain,  and  his  only  part  in  it  is  to  remember 
and  write  it  down.  It  is  not  more  strange  in  the  case  of 
a  poet,  whose  brain  is  beat  into  rhythm,  that  a  mood 
should  so  discharge  itself  in  musical  images  than  that 
when  you  sit  down  before  the  fire,  vivid  pictures  should 
of  themselves  rise  before  your  mind  in  revery.  The 
spontaneous  action  of  the  mind,  carrying  with  it  oblivion 
of  self,  seems  the  essential  factor  in  poetic  inspiration, 
as  it  is  known  to  us  from  the  poets'  autobiographies. 
Emotion  is  the  unloosed  force;  and  always  emotion  tends 
to  obliterate  the  reason,  not  only  by  dulling  and  destroy 
ing  the  principle  of  caution,  but  also  to  such  a  degree 
that  after  the  access  of  emotion  has  passed,  words  and 
even  acts  are  brokenly,  and  sometimes  not  at  all,  re 
called. 

It  is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  emotion  of  this  drifting 
and  possessing  sort  is  primary  in  human  nature.  It 
may  well  be  that  the  state  of  primitive  man  was  more 
dreamlike  than  we  easily  fancy,  that  as  he  emerged 
from  the  brute  his  mental  state  was  still  casual,  lax, 
uncertain,  subject  to  torpid  intervals,  and  coursed  by 
waves  of  panic  fear  and  strange  expectancy.  The  great 
effort  of  civilization  has  been,  and  still  is,  the  attempt 
to  introduce  a  principle  of  control  into  that  casual  swarm 
of  impressions  which  makes  up  men's  thought  and  of 
which,  especially  when  swayed  by  emotion,  spontaneous 
action  is  the  law.  The  poet,  then,  under  excitement, 
seems  to  present  the  phenomenon  of  a  highly  developed 
mind  working  in  a  primitive  way;  what  is  called  his 
madness  denotes  nothing  abnormal,  but  is  rather  an  un 
usually  perfect  illustration  of  the  normal  action  of  emo 
tion  in  a  pure  form;  he  is  mad  in  so  far  as  he  does  not 


POETIC   MADNESS  173 

call  either  will  or  reason  to  his  aid,  but  allows  unimpeded 
course  to  the  instinctive  expression  of  passion. 

Passion,  then,  is  the  birthright  of  the  poet;  without 
it  he  is  nothing.  That  is  why  the  poet  works  himself 
into  the  hearts  of  men;  for  emotion  is  fundamental  in 
life;  as  a  possession,  as  an  energy,  life  has  its  value  in 
its  emotional  moments.  It  is  true  that  now  for  a  long 
whilfTwe  have  tried  to  intellectualize  life;  it  is  the  great 
aim  of  literary  education.  But  the  life  that  is  led  in 
thought,  from  history  and  travel  and  learning  through 
all  its  compass,  is  life  at  secondhand.  The  reality  lies, 
in  general,  in  emotional  contact.  If  two  men  exchange 
thoughts,  they  are  fellow-beings;  if  they  share  an  emo 
tion,  they  are  brother  men.  The  poet  comes,  and  either 
reflects  or  arouses  emotion  and  shares  the  gift  he  brings, 
and  is  thus  always  and  in  all  lands  the  dear  comrade 
of  men.  Emotion  is  the  fusing  force  which  unites  the 
poet  with  his  fellow-men;  but  first  in  his  own  career  it 
has  united  him  with  life. 

The  mode  in  which  it  does  so  is  simple.  It  is  most 
plain  in  that  part  of  experience  which  directly  addresses 
the  senses  and  is  absorbed  therein.  The  poet  who  is 
especially  open  to  the  things  of  nature,  for  example, 
to  color  and  bloom  and  weather,  to  the  motion  of  the 
seas  and  the  infinity  of  the  stars,  to  the  exhilaration  of 
a  swim  or  a  ride,  does  with  his  body  drink  the  light  of  the 
world  and  the  joy  of  existence.  How  many  pages  of  the 
most  welcome  verse  simply  reflect  this  natural  joy  of 
living!  It  is  not  the  image  but  the  delight  of  the 
image,  not  the  event  but  the  joy  of  the  event  that 
exalts  sensation  into  poetry.  In  a  similar  way  emotion 
fuses  the  poet  with  ideas.  The  type  is,  of  course,  the 
fanatic  who  is  so  possessed  with  the  idea  that  he  becomes 


174  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

no  more  than  its  instrument  and  living  embodiment. 
The  revolutionary  poets  display  this  power  with  clear 
ness;  in  the  great  songs  of  the  French  Revolution  the 
Dionysiac  quality,  the  presence  of  the  mad  throng,  the 
singing  horde,  had  its  last  great  literary  illustration; 
and  wherever  a  poet  sings  the  causes  of  mankind,  there 
is  this  fanatical  blending  of  his  own  soul  with  the  idea. 
But  whether  in  the  senses  or  in  the  soul,  emotion  through 
out  the  field  is  the  life  itself;  thought  is  only  the  means 
of  life;  and  even  in  the  case  where  great  thoughts,  such 
as  scientific  conceptions,  of  themselves  generate  sublime 
emotion,  the  consummation  of  the  thought  is  not  in  the 
knowledge  but  in  the  emotion. 

The  sign  of  the  poet,  then,  is  that  by  passion  he  enters 
into  life  more  than  other  men.  That  is  his  gift  —  the 
power  to  live.  The  lives  of  poets  are  but  little  known; 
but  from  the  fragments  of  their  Jives  that  come  down 
to  us,  the  characteristic  legend  is  that  they  have  been 
singularly  creatures  of  passion.  They  lived  before  they 
sang.  Emotion  is  the  condition  of  their  existence;  pas 
sion  is  the  element  of  their  being;  and,  moreover,  the 
intensifying  power  of  such  a  state  of  passion  must  also 
be  remembered,  for  emotion  of  itself  naturally  heightens 
all  the  faculties,  and  genius  burns  the  brighter  in  its  own 
flames.  The  poet  craves  emotion,  and  feeds  the  fire  that 
consumes  him,  and  only  under  this  condition  is  he  bap 
tized  with  creative  power.  It  is  to  be  expected,  there 
fore,  that  the  tradition  of  the  poet's  life  should  have  an 
element  of  strangeness  in  it;  and,  in  fact,  to  neglect  those 
cases  where  genius  has  touched  the  border  of  actual 
madness,  every  poet  has  this  stamp  of  destiny  set  upon 
him.  There  is  always  some  wildness  in  his  nature;  he 
is  apt  to  be  roving,  adventurous,  unforeseen;  he  is  with- 


POETIC   MADNESS  175 

•* 

out  fear,  he  is  careless  of  his  life,  he  is  not  to  be  com 
manded;  freedom  is  what  he  most  dearly  loves,  and  he 
will  have  it  at  any  peril;  that  from  which  he  will  not  be 
divided  is  the  primeval  heritage,  the  Dionysiac  madness 
that  resides  not  only  in  the  instincts,  but  in  all  the  facul 
ties  of  man  —  the  power  and  the  passion  to  live.  It 
is  a  widespread  error,  and  due  only  to  the  academic 
second-hand  practice  of  poetry,  to  oppose  the  poet  to 
the  man  of  action,  or  assign  to  him  a  merely  contem 
plative  role  in  life,  or  in  other  ways  deny  reality  to  the 
poet's  experience;  intensity  of  living  is  preliminary  to 
all  great  expression.  From  the  beginning,  about  the 
rude  altar  of  the  god,  to  the  days  of  Goethe,  of  Leopardi, 
and  of  Victor  Hugo,  the  poet  is  the  leader  in  the  dance 
of  life ;  and  the  phrase  by  which  we  name  his  singularity, 
the  poetic  temperament,  denotes  the  primacy  of  that  pas 
sion  in  his  blood  with  which  the  frame  of  other  men  is  less 
richly  charged. 

The  poet  seems  always  a  lonely  figure;  but  this  is 
the  paradox  that  the  more  lonely  he  is,  the  more  he  is  a 
leader.  The  second  trait  of  poetic  energy  is  that  it  is 
a  social  power,  and  this  is  no  whit  less  essential  than  its 
emotional  basis.  It  is  true  that  in  early  times  poetic 
energy  in  its  rude  forms,  as  the  rhythm  of  labor,  of  war, 
of  the  feast,  had  a  larger  social  place  and  extended  more 
widely  over  primitive  life;  it  was  not  then  individualized 
at  all.  Rhythm  originally  was  more  obviously  the  social 
bond,  in  joint  movements  of  the  throng,  than  it  is  now 
in  the  arts  developed  out  of  it  —  sculpture,  music,  and 
poetry.  The  greatness  of  all  the  arts,  it  has  been  widely 
and  justly  proclaimed,  lies  in  their  social  character;  in 
so  far  as  they  minister  only  to  individuals  they  are  steri 
lized.  Literature  is  the  greatest  of  the  arts  because  its 


176  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

social  scope  is  most  extended  and  most  penetrating. 
What  holy  cities  are  to  nomadic  tribes  —  a  symbol  of 
race  and  a  bond  of  union  —  great  books  are  to  the  wan 
dering  souls  of  men;  they  are  the  Meccas  of  the  mind. 
Homer  was  to  Greece  another  Delphi.  In  the  geography 
of  the  mind  national  literatures  stand  like  mountain 
ranges,  marking  the  great  emotional  upheavals  of  the 
race;  such  are  the  sacred  books  of  all  peoples;  such  was 
the  literature  of  Greece,  the  glory  that  shone  when  rea 
son  came  to  birth  among  men;  such  were  the  outburst 
of  Italian  poetry  and  the  particular  periods  of  greatness 
in  the  modern  literatures  of  Europe.  Great  literatures, 
in  other  words,  are  formed  along  the  lines  of  fracture  in 
the  social  advance  of  the  race.  It  is  true  that  supreme 
social  value  seems  to  belong  rather  to  the  books  of  past 
ages;  but  this  is  largely  an  error  of  perspective,  for 
distance  is  essential  to  the  measurement.  The  race  is 
content  to  live  long  on  the  memory  of  such  achievement; 
and  the  channels  of  social  emotion  on  the  great  scale 
having  been  once  worked  out,  the  moods  of  men  flow 
therein  for  a  long  age. 

/The  fixity  of  these  ancient  channels,  too,  is  an  essen 
tial  factor  in  the  problem  of  poetic  energy.  Plato  recom 
mended  that  no  poetry  be  allowed  in  the  state  except 
hymns  of  a  fixed  ceremonial  character;  and  curiously 
the  fact  is  that  literature  always  tends  to  approach  that 
state  of  tradition.  Life  everywhere  hardens  into  formu 
las;  and  thus  in  literature  books  become  established 
as  classics,  schools  of  poetry  become  academic,  expres 
sion  becomes  formulistic.  Emotion,  that  is,  discharges 
itself  through  accustomed  channels,  through  images  and 
phrases  and  cadences  that  have  become  its  known  lan 
guage;  as,  for  example,  was  the  case  with  that  special 


POETIC   MADNESS  177 

•* 

form  of  poetry  known  as  Petrarchan.  The  emotion  is 
genuine,  but  the  form  is  old.  When  it  has  been  shown 
that  Shakespeare  employed  in  his  sonnets  the  conven 
tional  European  expression  of  emotion,  it  has  not  been 
shown  that  the  emotion  was  not  genuine,  but  merely 
that  the  poet  used  a  conventionalized  art.  How  much 
of  reality  can  exist  in  conventionalized  art  the  whole 
early  history  of  painting  and  sculpture  shows.  The  ex 
pression  of  emotion  is  generally  conventional,  and  the 
more  social  it  is,  the  more  is  it  conventionalized. 

The  poet,  therefore,  new  born  in  the  world,  finds  the 
field  preoccupied.  Religion,  for  example,  is  supplied 
with  literary  expression  in  its  Bibles  and  hymns,  and 
besides  has  the  works  of  the  other  arts,  architecture, 
sculpture,  painting,  and  music,  and  in  addition,  the  splen 
dor  and  awe  of  its  ritual.  The  national  passion,  patri 
otism,  finds  embodiment  for  itself  in  long-established 
literature  as  well  as  in  other  ways.  In  fact,  the  poet 
finds  social  emotion  already  ritualized,  if  I  may  say  so, 
in  every  part  of  life.  He  enters  into  no  rivalry  with  the 
work  which  has  already  been  accomplished  by  his  pre 
decessors;  he  rejoices  in  it,  but  it  is  not  his  work.  It 
follows  that  the  new  poet  is  necessarily  the  exponent  of 
emotion  in  new  fields  or  turned  toward  new  objects;  he 
is  an  experimenter,  as  it  were,  in  life;  and  this  accounts 
often  for  his  hard  fate.  If  he  is  to  be  great,  he  is  already 
on  that  line  of  fracture  in  social  evolution  of  which  I 
have  just  spoken.  He  sometimes  stands  in  the  light  of 
an  unrisen  day.  Hence,  in  his  own  time,  he  may  appear 
even  antisocial.  How  often  has  the  poet  been  denounced 
as  an  atheist,  as  a  revolutionist,  an  innovator,  a  wild 
thinker  and  rash  actor,  and  always  as  a  dreamer!  It 
it  because  his  natural  habitat  is  there,  in  the  new  and 


178  THE    INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

unknown  stir  of  the  world  coming  to  birth.  It  is  al 
together  natural  that  he  should  be  discredited,  unrecog 
nized  or  disowned,  that  he  should  go  hungry  and  often 
starve,  that  he  should  die  in  poverty  and  neglect,  that 
the  very  name  of  the  poet  in  history  should  be  a 
synonym  for  sorrow  and  want.  This  has  been  his 
lot  in  all  ages,  and  if  any  poet  has  escaped  it,  he 
has  done  so  by  a  miracle.  The  contrast  between  his 
poor  and  solitary  state  and  his  after  fame  is  one  of  the 
fascinations  that  fasten  the  eyes  of  men  upon  him.  It 
seems  strange  that  a  great  social  force  should  have  resided 
in  so  despised  an  individual.  But  the  world's  work  is 
not  done  in  crowds,  though  crowds  are  the  instruments 
and  beneficiaries  of  it.  Where  the  man  of  science  in 
his  lonely  study  or  silent  laboratory  toils  in  secret,  where 
Newton  or  Pasteur  works,  there  the  brain  of  the  race 
thinks,  and  wins  its  slow  advance  on  the  unknown;  and 
where  the  poet  is  though  he  be  in  the  wilderness,  there 
the  heart  of  the  race  beats.  The  poet,  born  for  the  future, 
will  be  found  always  in  the  thick  of  ideas  and  in  the  heat 
of  the  glowing  world  of  change;  he  takes  into  his  single 
breast  the  rising  mass,  and  shapes  upon  his  lips  in  silence 
the  master  words  of  many  thousand  men. 

It  might  appear  that  the  poet,  who  is  thus  a  creature 
of  passion  and  in  the  whirl  of  new  social  forces,  is  doomed 
to  abide  in  a  state  of  chaos;  and  the  poet,  in  a  certain 
sense,  is  the  most  lawless  of  men.  Yet,  as  I  have  indi 
cated,  there  is  a  principle  of  control;  it  is  art.  The 
original  element  of  art  is  rhythm,  that  very  measure  of 
which  the  primitive  cadence  still  times  the  poet's  utter 
ance;  and  it  is  true  that  the  mere  music  of  verse  has  a 
power  of  itself  "in  the  very  torrent,  tempest,  and  whirl 
wind  of  passion"  to  beget  a  temperance  that  gives  it 


POETIC   MADNESS  179 

•* 

smoothness.  But  art,  though  growing  historically  out 
of  mere  rhythm,  is  a  broader  principle,  and  as  it  grows, 
it  becomes  more  and  more  an  intellectual  thing.  In 
Nietzsche's  phrase,  this  is  Apollo's  domain,  the  realm 
of  intellect;  for  form  is  an  intellectual  thing.  The 
dream,  which  accompanies  emotion,  is  hi  truth  its  other 
and  finite  incarnation;  it  is  the  woof  of  color  and  image 
—  all  that  is  especially  taken  note  of  by  the  eye,  which 
is  the  most  intellectual  of  the  senses,  and  by  the  under 
standing,  which  is  the  eye  of  the  mind;  whether  in  its 
physical  representation,  which  is  woven  of  the  senses, 
or  in  its  bodiless  conception,  which  belongs  to  the  higher 
life  of  moral  contemplation  and  abstract  truth,  it  is  the 
idea;  and  it  is  this  accompanying  dream,  this  idea,  this 
form  of  art,  which  gives  relief  to  the  emotion,  disburdens, 
and  quiets  it. 

The  idea  in  this  sense  is  the  sphere  of  form;  it  is  in 
this  dream  that  the  mind  works,  that  art  resides.  It 
is  this,  too,  that  gives  character  to  the  emotion;  for 
emotion  is  noble  or  base,  wise  or  foolish,  a  power  to 
save  or  a  power  to  ruin,  according  to  the  objects  and 
events  toward  which  it  is  directed  and  the  mode  in  which 
it  envelops  them.  The  development  of  the  idea,  the 
arrangement  of  its  parts  and  phases,  the  order  of  the 
ode  or  the  drama  or  the  epic  in  unfolding  its  theme,  is  in 
poetry  the  labor  of  art;  it  is  what  composition  is  in  sculp 
ture  or  painting.  This  art,  however,  in  the  sense  of  a  prin 
ciple  of  control,  has  two  modes;  one  lies  in  the  dream  it 
self,  in  its  original  emanation  from  the  mind,  in  its  sub 
stance;  the  other  lies  in  its  handling.  The  substance  of  the 
dream  is  one  thing;  the  handling  of  it  is  another;  and 
it  is  to  the  handling  that  what  is  called  technique,  the 
most  conscious  form  of  art,  specially  refers.  It  is  to 


i  So  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that  just  as  poetic  energy 
is  not  something  brought  down  from  heaven,  but  is  the 
fire  and  motion  of  life  itself,  so  the  dream  that  attends 
emotion  is  not  something  artificially  and  arbitrarily 
united  with  it,  but  is  given  forth  from  it,  and  as  natu 
rally  joined  there  as  the  flower  to  the  root.  Try  as  one 
may,  one  cannot  in  poetry  —  not  even  in  its  art  —  escape 
from  the  omnipresence  of  this  secret  power,  the  mystery 
that  gives  forth  life,  of  that  which  is  beneath  all.  It 
is  one  great  use  of  works  of  art  that  they  teach  our  eyes 
to  see,  even  in  nature  and  human  life  as  they  are,  the 
beauty  with  which  they  are  clothed  in  their  actuality. 
Emotion,  in  its  own  natural  expression,  is  a  beautiful 
or  pathetic  or  terrifying  sight.  There  is  an  unconscious 
power  in  life  itself  to  clothe  its  own  emanation  so;  and 
of  this  power  art  is  the  follower  in  imagination.  In  the 
poet  this  instinctive  power  in  himself  gives  the  dream, 
the  substance;  he  cannot  tell  how  it  arises  in  him;  it 
comes  as  the  smile  comes  to  the  lips  or  tears  to  the  eyes 
—  he  knows  not  whence  they  are;  and,  furthermore,  he 
is  not  yet  the  poet,  but  only  the  novice,  if  his  technical 
skill  is  not  also  instinctively  applied  and  the  arrange 
ment  of  the  theme  instinctively  accomplished.  In  the 
stroke  of  genius  there  is  no  calculation.  The  poet  does 
not  scan  his  verses  nor  hunt  his  rhymes,  any  more  than 
the  musical  composer  seeks  for  concords;  still  less  does 
he  search  for  color  and  image  and  idea.  He  is  as  un 
conscious  of  his  processes,  even  when  originally  acquired 
with  difficulty,  as  the  athlete  is  of  the  play  of  his 
muscles.  The  mastery  of  technique  is,  indeed,  necessary 
to  the  novice,  but  it  is  only  the  tuning  of  the  instru 
ment;  conscious  art  must  pass  into  the  hand,  the  eye, 
the  brain,  the  heart,  and  there  be  forgotten,  nor  does  it 


POETIC   MADNESS  181 

become  true  power  until  it  is  so  forgotten.  The  dream, 
the  idea,  both  in  its  substance  and  its  handling,  its  con 
stituting  form  and  its  technique,  is,  in  the  work  of  genius, 
instinctive;  unless  it  be  so,  it  is  flawed  and  incomplete. 
Art  is  a  perfect  principle  of  control  only  when  it  thus 
operates,  as  rhythm  does,  like  a  law  of  nature,  from 
which,  hi  fact,  it  is  not  to  be  distinguished;  for  it  is  that 
secret  law  of  harmony  unveiled  in  man's  nature. 

Poetic  energy,  so  conceived,  is  a  phenomenon  of  the 
spiritual  nature  of  man,  and  is  ruled,  both  in  emotion  and 
in  idea,  by  its  own  inward  law.  The  passion  of  life  em 
bodies  itself  in  all  men  according  as  they  have  the  power 
to  live,  in  experience ;  and  in  the  poets  it  embodies  itself  in 
imagination.  The  passion  of  life,  which  is  the  great 
mystery  of  the  universe,  shapes  unto  itself  many  forms 
in  different  ages,  in  different  climes,  under  different  gods. 
It  has  many  births;  and  the  miracle  of  this  mystery  is 
the  diversity  of  these  births,  the  novelty  and  surprise 
of  each  new  morning  as  it  breaks  upon  a  world  whose 
law  is  death  and  which  is  forever  passing  away.  I  said 
that  the  poet  is  the  most  lawless  of  men;  that  is  because 
he  lives  in  an  ampler  law,  because  the  life  that  is  born 
in  him  refuses  to  be  bound  in  the  old  births  of  time; 
he  breaks  all  conventions,  he  tramples  on  all  supersti 
tions,  he  violates  all  barriers;  for  he  brings  his  own  world 
with  him,  and  new  horizons.  Emerson  said  that  the 
birth  of  a  poet  is  the  chief  event  in  chronology.  He 
means  that  they  mark  the  great  changes  hi  the  minds 
of  men.  Wherever  such  a  change  is  nigh,  wherever  the 
flame  of  life  bursts  forth  with  most  power  and  splendor, 
there  the  poet  is  found;  he  is  the  morning  and  the 
evening  star  of  civilizations.  He  is  but  one  among  men, 
but  in  his  single  soul  the  soul  of  mankind  comes  to  fullest 


182  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

consciousness  of  itself  and  is  illuminated  from  horizon 
to  horizon,  from  height  to  depth.  He  seems  to  men 
divine  because  he  thus  gives  to  them  the  divine  part 
of  themselves.  His  fame  may  be  swift  or  slow,  but  in 
the  end  it  fills  the  world.  He  is  lawless,  judged  by  the 
finite;  but  in  his  passion  and  his  dream  he  has  given 
himself  to  a  higher  law,  and  reposes  on  the  infinite,  of 
which  he  is  the  latest  birth.  So  it  seems  to  him.  In 
these  lectures  I  shall  present  the  genius  of  six  of  these 
poets  as  illustrations  of  that  passion  and  power  of  life 
in  which  poetic  energy  consists. 


II 

MARLOWE 

MARLOWE  is  the  very  type  of  the  poet  whom  I  have 
described.  "Mad"  is  the  first  epithet  that  comes  to 
our  lips  in  thinking  of  him  —  "mad  Marlowe," — • 
whether  one  looks  at  the  wildness  of  his  unregulated 
career  or  at  the  tameless  force  embodied  in  his  genius  or 
at  the  romantic  extravaganza  that  is  the  body  of  his 
literary  achievement.  Brief  and  tragic  were  the  annals 
of  his  life.  He  was  born  two  months  before  Shakespeare; 
son  of  the  shoemaker  at  Canterbury;  educated  at  school 
and  college;  a  scholar  when  he  came  down  from  Cam 
bridge  to  London,  which  he  entered  the  same  year  with 
Shakespeare;  favored  by  the  theaters  and  the  public; 
a  wild  liver,  impulsive,  passionate,  uncontrolled,  giving 
his  genius  free  way  with  himself  for  the  eight  years  of 
his  manhood  during  which  he  did  his  work;  faithful  to 
his  intellectual  part  and  industrious  as  he  must  have  been 
to  have  accomplished  all  that  he  did;  and  killed  in  a 
tavern  brawl  at  the  age  of  thirty.  This  is  all  that  we 
know  of  him;  yet  in  every  line  of  this  story  one  knows 
that  it  is  the  epitaph  of  genius.  He  was  in  his  own  day 
denounced  as  an  atheist  and  blasphemer,  and  his  death 
was  long  cited  as  a  notable  instance  of  God's  sudden 
justice.  "Not  inferior  to  these,"  says  one  account,  "was 
one  Christopher  Marlow,  by  profession  a  play-maker, 
who,  as  it  is  reported,  about  14  years  ago  wrote  a  book 
against  the  Trinity.  But  see  the  effects  of  God's  justice! 

183 


1 84  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

It  so  happened  that  at  Detford,  a  little  village  about 
three  miles  distant  from  London,  as  he  meant  to  stab 
with  his  ponyard  one  named  Ingram  that  had  invited 
him  hither  to  a  feast  and  was  then  playing  at  tables,  he 
quickly  perceiving  it  so  avoided  the  thrust  that  withal, 
drawing  out  his  dagger  for  his  defense,  he  stabbed  this 
Marlow  into  the  eye  in  such  a  sort  that,  his  braines 
coming  out  at  the  dagger's  point,  he  shortly  after  died. 
Thus  did  God,  the  true  executioner  of  divine  justice,  work 
the  end  of  impious  atheists."  So  runs  the  Puritan's  ac 
count  of  this  tragic  episode;  and  it  is  altogether  likely 
that  Marlowe,  lawless  in  all  ways,  was  a  free-thinker,  and 
being  a  child  of  the  Italian  Renaissance  was  then  intel 
lectually  what  was  called  Machiavellian  in  his  ideas. 

Notwithstanding  this  grewsome  picture  of  the  atheist's 
bloody  death,  it  was  not  thus  that  the  poets  of  that  age 
saw  the  protagonist  of  their  company  who  brought  in 
"the  spacious  times  of  great  Elizabeth."  Their  tributes 
to  his  memory  make  us  aware  of  an  exceptional  quality 
in  the  man,  of  the  burning  of  a  fire  in  him  such  as  no 
other  of  his  comrades  knew  the  touch  of,  of  something 
that  transfigured  him;  and  this  transfiguration  is  seen 
in  the  fact  that  he  alone  of  all  that  group  was  idealized 
by  them  in  fancy.  The  poets  brought  flowers  as  if  to 
hide  the  corpse  of  that  grisly  memory  of  his  death.  It 
is  much  that  he  who  lay  there  was  Shakespeare's  "dead 
shepherd."  The  other  lesser  poets,  whenever  they  speak 
of  him,  are  instinctively  touched  with  imaginative  fan 
tasy.  Chapman,  invoking  the  Muse,  bids  her  seek  Mar 
lowe's  spirit,  and  after  death 

"find  the  eternal  clime 
Of  his  free  soul,  whose  living  subject  stood 
Up  to  the  chin  in  the  Pierian  flood"; 


MARLOWE  185 

and  in  the  flowing  line  we  seem  to  feel  the  full  flood  of 
that  stream  of  poetry  as  it  broke  forth  in  its  own  age. 
Drayton's  oft-quoted  words  transmit  the  strange  fire  that 
was  in  the  young  poet's  whole  frame  like  a  second  soul:  — 

"Next  Marlow,  bathed  in  the  Thespian  springs, 
Had  in  him  those  brave  translunary  things 
That  the  first  poets  had;  his  raptures  were 
All  air  and  fire  which  made  his  verses  clear; 
For  that  fine  madness  still  he  did  retain 
Which  rightly  should  possess  a  poet's  brain." 

Personal  fascination  survives  in  this  description  —  the 
transcendency  of  genius,  seen,  felt,  touched,  as  it  were, 
in  its  mortal  body  by  mortal  senses.  Still  another  youth 
ful  poet,  like  Chapman,  following  the  spirit  with  praise 
after  death, 

"where  Mario's  gone 
To  live  with  beauty  in  Elyzium," 

gives  us  the  contemporary  glow  of  enthusiasm  for  Mar 
lowe's  eloquent  and  musical  fancy: — 

"Whose  silver-charming  tongue  moved  such  delight 
That  men  would  shun  their  sleep  in  still  dark  night 
To  meditate  upon  his  golden  lines." 

It  is  by  the  light  of  such  tributes  as  these  that  we 
recall  and  re-create  the  young  poet, — in  his  rise  the  star 
of  the  Elizabethan  morning,  in  his  tragic  fall,  as  Lowell 
called  him,  "the  herald  that  dropped  dead  in  announcing 
the  victory  in  whose  fruits  he  was  not  to  share." 

"Cut  is  the  branch  that  might  have  grown  full  straight, 
And  burned  is  Apollo's  laurel  bough," 

we  cry;  the  sense  of  the  limitless  power  and  suggestion  of 
genius  blends  with  the  accident  of  its  extinction  in  its  first 


1 86  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

burst  —  the  pathos  of  what  was  never  to  be,  the  tragedy 
of  a  soul  of  price  lost  to  mankind;  and  with  this  mood 
dumbly  mingles  the  universal  feeling  of  some  darkness  in 
poetic  fate,  and  obtains  mastery  of  the  heart  and  controls 
insensibly  the  judgment.  To  all  later  poets,  as  to  his 
contemporaries,  Marlowe  is  a  younger  brother,  struck 
by  the  shaft  of  unkind  gods;  something  of  that  trans 
figuration  that  his  fellows  saw  —  the  silver  flood  of 
beauty  about  him,  the  miraculous  fire  within  him  —  still 
lingers,  and  he  stays  to  abide  our  question  rather  in  his 
spirit,  in  the  might  of  unaccomplished  resources,  than  in 
any  created  work  that  came  from  his  hand. 

One  work  there  is,  however,  in  which  his  youthful- 
ness  stands  revealed,  his  tastes  and  sensibilities,  the 
richness  of  his  emotions,  and  the  warmth  of  his  life. 
The  translation  he  made  after  Moschus,  called  "Hero 
and  Leander,"  gave  to  English  literature  its  single  work 
of  the  pagan  paradise,  and  it  shows  such  an  endowment 
of  the  soul  and  body  of  passion  in  the  hand  that  wrote 
it  and  the  heart  that  brooded  it,  as  leaves  its  young 
author  among  English  poets  without  a  rival  for  sensuous 
happiness.  The  poem  still  stands  alone;  neither  its 
mood  nor  its  music  has  ever  since  been  heard  in  Eng 
land.  It  was  plainly  this  poem  that  clothed  Mar 
lowe  with  that  atmosphere  of  the  golden  age  in  which 
his  brother  poets  saw  him  stand.  By  it  he  became  for 
them  the  heir  of  classic  beauty  and  the  living  token  of 
that  voluptuousness  in  the  joys  of  the  imagination  which 
was  the  poetic  charm  of  the  Italian  Renaissance;  and 
to  them  he  stood  forth  like  an  inhabitant  of  that  fair 
realm,  native  to  that  air,  and  mixed  with  the  figures  and 
the  landscape  of  his  own  vision.  We  can  realize  only 
faintly  the  power  with  which  this  great  movement,  the 


MARLOWE  187 

Renaissance,  the  new  and  second  birth  of  man's  intellect 
and  sense,  came  upon  the  nations  of  the  West;  with  what 
vital  surprise,  what  energizing  force,  what  kindling  im 
pulses  along  the  nerves  of  will  and  desire,  with  what 
intoxication  of  intellectual  curiosity  and  artistic  passion, 
this  renovation  of  life  hi  Italy  fell  in  the  second  century 
of  its  accumulated  mass,  and  made  impact  through  a 
thousand  channels  on  such  an  age  as  Elizabeth's  and  on 
such  a  fiery  and  sensitive  temperament,  such  an  origina 
tive  and  shaping  genius  as  Marlowe's.  This  little  poem, 
nevertheless,  is  like  a  single  blossom  from  that  world 
wide  field,  and  may  give  us  the  hue  and  fragrance  of  the 
Renaissance  in  flower,  if  we  will:  so  a  rose  shadows  us 
with  Persia,  or  a  single  lotus  blossom  unbosoms  all  the 
Nile. 

One  quality  the  poem  has,  which  specially  charac 
terizes  it  as  Marlowe's  handiwork  —  an  excitement  of 
the  imagination  resulting  in  exuberance  of  fancy,  a 
stream  of  decorative  art,  an  incessant  welling  up  of 
imagery  and  epithet  in  profuse  and  exhaustless  abun 
dance;  no  poem  is  so  fluent,  so  effortless,  so  negligently 
rich  in  this  regard,  so  prodigal  in  its  spending  of  the 
coin  of  fancy.  In  that  age  when  all  the  seas  first  yielded 
to  man,  imagination,  too,  made  her  voyages  of  discovery, 
and  brought  home  gold  and  pearl  and  the  marvel  of  the 
loom  from  every  clime;  many  a  passage  in  the  poets  of 
those  days  is  a  museum  in  itself;  and  of  this  rifled  wealth 
of  the  Elizabethan  world,  heaped  from  antique  and 
oriental  sources  and  every  quarter  of  learning  or  of 
fable,  Marlowe  was  a  master.  In  "Hero  and  Leander" 
he  showed  only  his  prentice  hand  in  this  lavish  piracy. 
It  is,  nevertheless,  even  there  a  sign  of  that  overflowing- 
ness  which  stamped  his  genius  from  the  first  as  of  a  royal 


i88  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

nature.  He  had  neither  to  search  nor  to  hoard,  but  only 
to  spend.  It  was  not,  however,  in  a  love  episode,  a  few 
hundred  lines  in  length,  however  stored  with  langour 
and  beauty,  that  he  was  to  show  his  wealth,  but  on  the 
broad  stage  of  England.  The  poet,  nevertheless,  was 
prior  to  the  dramatist  in  Marlowe,  as  indeed  all  the  Eliza 
bethans  were  poets  first  and  dramatists  afterwards;  and 
it  was  this  poet,  the  child  of  Italy  and  the  Hellespont 
breathing  English  air,  that  his  brother  poets  loved  and 
immortalized,  before  ever  his  greater  fame  as  the  first 
fashioner  of  a  noble  and  lofty  style  for  English  drama 
was  even  dreamed  of. 

I  own  that  the  early  English  drama  has  caused  me 
much  weariness  even  in  my  youthful  days,  and  neither 
would  I  now  voluntarily  read  it,  nor  should  I  have  the 
heart  to  subject  any  other  to  the  trial.  For  men  of 
English  speech  the  drama  is  necessarily  measured  by 
Shakespeare;  and  in  a  certain  sense  he  raises  his  fellows 
to  his  own  neighborhood.  So,  when  one  stands  upon 
the  highest  summit  of  some  many-folded  range  of  hills, 
the  mere  loftiness  of  his  station  makes  the  lower  crowns, 
distinct  and  bold  beneath  him,  seem  little  inferior;  but 
when,  on  the  other  hand,  descending,  he  makes  one  of 
them  his  perch,  how  the  lonely  monarch  soars  aloft! 
Thus  it  is  when  from  Shakespeare's  height  men  survey 
his  fellows,  the  swelling  names  of  that  Elizabethan  cluster. 
"Marlowe,"  they  say,  "on  whose  dawn-flushed  brow  the 
morning  clouds  too  soon  crept  with  envious  vapors  that 
the  most  golden  of  Apollo's  shafts  should  never  pierce 
more;  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  twins  of  the  summer 
noontide,  and  Chapman  bearing  his  weight  of  forests 
with  the  ease  and  might  of  old  Titans;  Ford  and  Web 
ster  who  made  their  home  with  the  tempest  and  seemed 


MARLOWE  189 

to  leash  the  thunder; "  and  so  on  with  all  the  others  of  the 
tremendous  upheaval  of  the  age.  But  when  one  leaves 
Shakespeare's  ground,  and  descends  to  any  of  these, 
how  tumid  is  all  such  description,  while  undiminished 
the  king  of  the  peaks  still  soars  in  the  sky!  It  is  not 
by  our  will  that  Shakespeare's  altitude  is  made  the 
measure  of  other  men  who  were  so  unfortunate  as  to  be 
born  his  rivals;  one  can  help  it  no  more  than  the  eye 
can  help  seeing.  His  genius  reduced  all  his  contempo 
raries  to  perpetual  subjection  to  itself;  no  superlatives 
can  be  offered  in  their  praise  except  by  his  leave,  and 
when  their  own  worth  is  made  known,  the  last  service 
they  do,  in  showing  us  how  invaluable  is  Shakespeare's 
treasure,  is  perhaps  the  most  useful. 

Even  Marlowe,  in  whose  youth,  if  anywhere  in  history, 
was  the  promise  of  a  mate  for  Shakespeare,  needs  the 
latter's  withdrawal  before  he  can  tread  the  stage.  Some 
would  say  possibly  that  Shakespeare  might  not  have  ob 
tained  entrance  there  with  Lear  and  Othello,  if  Marlowe 
had  not  first  fitted  the  tragic  buskin  to  the  high  step 
of  Tamburlaine;  and  hi  a  sense  the  retort  is  just.  The 
highest  genius  avails  itself  of  those  who  go  before  to 
prepare  the  way,  the  road-makers  building  the  paths  of 
speech  and  opening  the  provinces  of  thought;  but  to  be 
forced  to  stipulate  at  the  outset  that  a  great  name  in 
literature,  such  as  Marlowe's,  shall  be  considered  only 
with  reference  to  his  turn  in  historical  development  is 
to  make  a  confession  of  weakness  in  the  cause;  it  is  to 
forego  his  claim  to  be  considered  as  a  writer  of  universal 
literature.  What  the  difference  is,  in  Marlowe's  case, 
is  tersely  indicated  by  the  fact  that  competent  students 
discern  his  genius  in  "Titus  Andronicus,"  which  in 
Shakespeare's  crown  is  rather  a  foil  than  a  gem.  This 


igo  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

play,  with  Marlowe's  touch  still  on  it,  would  illustrate, 
if  compared  with  Shakespeare's  undoubted  work,  how 
cumbrous  and  stiffening  were  the  shackles  of  the  stage 
tradition  from  which  Shakespeare  freed  the  art.  But  in 
Marlowe's  accredited  dramas,  say,  in  "Doctor  Faustus" 
(to  lay  aside  the  rant  of  "Tamburlaine"  as  merely  initia 
tory,  tentative,  and  facile)  the  necessities  of  contempo 
raneous  taste  and  usage  are  so  tyrannical  as  almost  to 
ruin  the  work  for  any  other  age.  "Doctor  Faustus"  is 
a  series  of  slightly  connected  scenes  from  the  life  of  a 
conjuror,  in  which  thaumaturgy  and  the  hatred  of  the 
Papacy  are  made  to  furnish  comic  horseplay  of  a  clown 
ish  kind;  or  else  fear  of  the  devil  is  used  to  freeze  the 
blood  of  the  spectators  with  the  horns,  hoofs,  and  fire 
of  coarse  horror.  Of  the  dramatic  capabilities  of  the 
Faust  legend  as  a  whole  Marlowe  indicates  no  percep 
tion.  He  caught  the  force  of  two  situations  in  it  —  the 
invocation  of  Helen's  shadow  and  the  soliloquy;  but 
though  in  treating  these  he  exhibited  genius  as  bold, 
direct,  and  original  as  Shakespeare's  own,  they  are  merely 
fragmentary.  Except  in  these  scenes  in  which  Mar 
lowe's  voice  really  quells  his  time  and  sounds  alone  in 
the  theater,  the  uproar  of  the  pit  frightens  away  the 
Muse  and  leaves  comedy  and  tragedy  alike  to  the  ruth 
less  disfigurement  of  the  early  English  stage.  In  "The 
Jew  of  Malta,"  even  if  the  first  two  acts  are  fashioned 
by  dramatic  genius  as  no  other  but  Shakespeare  could 
have  molded  them,  the  last  three  taper  off  into  the  tail 
of  the  old  monster  that  had  flopped  and  shuffled  on  the 
medieval  boards  on  every  saint's  day.  In  "Edward  II" 
alone  is  there  drama,  properly  speaking;  it  is  complete, 
connected,  sustained,  and  it  has  tenderness,  passion,  and 
pathos;  but  though  Swinburne  gives  it  the  palm  in  cer- 


MARLOWE  191 

tain  particulars  over  Shakespeare's  "Richard  II,"  which 
was  modeled  after  it,  the  former  will  not  bear  compari 
son  with  the  latter  in  dramatic  grasp.  To  notice  but 
one  difference;  in  Marlowe's  work  the  king's  favoritism 
is  so  much  an  infatuation  and  a  weakness  that  he  loses 
sympathy,  and  his  dethronement,  apart  from  its  brutal 
miseries,  is  felt  to  be  just;  while  in  Shakespeare  Rich 
ard's  favoritism  is  retired  far  in  the  background,  and  his 
faith  in  his  divine  right  to  the  crown  (never  insisted 
on  by  Edward)  is  so  eloquent,  and  so  pervades  and 
qualifies  the  whole  play,  that  when  the  king  is  murdered, 
one  is  driven  to  believe  that  the  bishop's  denunciation 
of  God's  vengeance  on  the  usurping  Lancaster  must 
prove  true  prophecy.  In  the  matter  of  dramatic  hand 
ling  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  Shakespeare's  more  expert 
sense,  though  his  ideality  may  make  the  characterization 
appear,  as  it  does  to  Swinburne,  less  sharp.  "Edward 
II"  is  Marlowe's  best  play;  but,  with  this  exception,  his 
dramas  in  general  are  deeply  engaged  in  the  rawness  of 
the  time,  dependent  in  many  scenes  on  vulgar  spectacle 
and  buffoonery,  on  burlesque  and  rout  and  horror,  Tam- 
burlaine's  chariot  drawn  by  captive  kings  in  harness,  the 
nose  of  Barabas,  which  passed  into  a  proverb  for  its 
enormousness,  and  similar  features.  So  much  must  be 
allowed,  lest  the  unwary  making  acquaintance  with  these 
plays  should  find  but  strange  entertainment.  Marlowe, 
as  a  dramatist,  is  not  to  be  judged  apart  from  his  his 
torical  moment;  nor  are  his  works  to  be  appreciated 
intelligently  except  by  the  student  of  the  dramatic  de 
velopment  of  our  stage. 

But  notwithstanding  the  crudity  of  Marlowe's  works, 
as  wholes,  every  page  proclaims  the  transcendency  of  the 
genius,  of  the  poetic  energy,  there  at  work.  It  is  an 


192  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

energy  that  has  a  volcanic  lift,  splendid,  terrifying,  filling 
heaven.  Marlowe's  great  achievement,  in  the  age  of 
discoveries  and  rediscoveries,  which  blending  together, 
constituted  a  renewal  of  man's  life  and  brought  a  new 
world  into  being,  was  to  rediscover  the  main  source, 
the  fountainhead,  of  dramatic  power.  He  rediscovered 
passion,  which  is  the  substance  of  poetry,  and  made  it 
the  substance  of  the  drama.  He  sympathized  with  great 
passions;  and  in  order  to  sympathize  with  them  he  had 
first  to  be  capable  of  great  passions;  that  was  his  endow 
ment.  The  first  and  abiding  impression  he  makes  upon 
the  reader  is  that  of  power  —  of  the  presence  in  his 
bosom  of  the  Dionysiac  daemonic  force,  —  life  clothing 
itself  in  restless  creative  faculty  and  calling  new  worlds 
into  being  in  the  intellectual  sphere.  He  was  a  creator, 
and  the  clay  he  used  was  humanity,  the  human  spirit, 
the  soul.  The  Renaissance  restored  to  man  the  dignity 
of  human  nature,  gave  the  human  spirit  back  to  itself 
as  a  power  of  life.  It  unveiled  the  great  achievement 
of  antiquity  in  literature,  in  sculpture  and  architecture, 
in  empire,  and,  perhaps  most  notably  of  all,  in  men. 
Nothing  is  more  significant  of  the  mood  of  the  age  than 
the  regard  in  which  Plutarch  was  held.  Plutarch  was, 
as  it  were,  a  resurrection  of  the  mighty  dead  of  Greece 
and  Rome.  The  human  soul  had  been  capable  of  such 
lives,  and  of  such  works  as  the  poets  and  philosophers 
and  artists  had  wrought  in  classical  times.  The  ex 
ample  was  like  a  trumpet  call;  what  man  had  done  and 
been,  man  could  still  be  and  do.  The  romantic  nations, 
Italy,  France,  Spain,  and  England,  broke  into  sudden 
flower  of  literature  and  art  and  life,  as  when  the  sun  in 
its  northing  clothes  the  whole  hemisphere  with  spring 
time,  and  the  force  of  nature  is  unloosed  like  a  flood, 


MARLOWE  193 

and  belts  the  planet  with  new  warmth  and  verdure.  It 
is  this  unloosing  of  human  faculty  that  characterizes  the 
age;  it  was  a  broader  phenomenon  than  we  are  apt  to 
think;  Shakespeare  was  but  an  incident  in  it. 

This  force  was  unloosed  in  Marlowe;  to  him,  hi  his 
awakening,  came  the  sense  of  the  greatness  of  man,  the 
miracle  of  human  power,  the  desire  to  possess  his  soul 
of  this  greatness,  to  be  in  himself  this  miracle  —  the 
passion  of  life.  Young  scholar  though  he  was  and  hardly 
fledged  from  college,  he  had  got  more  than  an  education; 
he  had  found  his  mind.  If  he  wrote  a  book  against  the 
Trinity,  as  was  alleged,  it  is  a  fact  that  is  certainly  not 
recorded  of  any  other  of  his  fellows,  and  shows  a  phil 
osophical  interest,  a  mentality,  different  in  kind  from 
theirs.  He  was  endowed  with  sensuousness  and  the 
warm  delight  in  beauty,  that  is  the  rarest  of  English 
poetic  traits  and  little  welcome  in  that  sluggish  climate; 
he  was  also  endowed  with  mind;  but  beneath  both  en 
dowments  lay  that  deep  desire  to  live,  that  consciousness 
of  the  power  to  live,  that  passion  to  realize  his  desire  in 
power,  and  for  which  there  was  no  other  pathway  for 
him  than  the  roads  of  the  imagination.  It  was  natural 
that  what  was  most  borne  in  upon  his  mind,  the  great 
ness  of  man  and  the  presence  in  man's  soul  of  all  that 
potent  faculty  of  which  Greece  and  Rome  and  Italy  were 
the  form  and  impression,  of  which  the  freshly  opened 
lands  and  seas,  east  and  west,  bore  the  promise  of  new 
world-careers  —  it  was  natural,  I  say,  that  this  height 
of  human  nature  which  was  foremost  in  his  sense  of  life 
should  be  cardinal  in  his  imaginative  brooding  whence 
issued  the  romantic  dreams  of  his  mind. 

He  first  seized  on  the  most  obvious  embodiment  of 
human  greatness,  military  empire,  and  on  the  prime  bar- 


194  THE  INSPIRATION  OF   POETRY 

baric  passion,  lust  of  dominion  —  on  power  in  its  most 
simple  and  sensual  form,  the  power  of  the  conqueror; 
he  set  forth  in  "Tamburlaine"  the  career  of  resistless  vic 
tory  ridden  by  a  master  of  the  world.  Tamburlaine  him 
self  proclaims  that  mastery  of  inexhaustible  ambition 
which  is  proper  to  man:  — 

"Nature  that  framed  us  of  four  elements, 
Warring  within  our  breasts  for  regiment, 
Doth  teach  us  all  to  have  aspiring  minds: 
Our  souls,  whose  faculties  can  comprehend 
The  wondrous  architecture  of  the  world, 
And  measure  every  wandering  planet's  course, 
Still  climbing  after  knowledge  infinite, 
And  always  moving  as  the  restless  spheres, 
Wills  us  to  wear  ourselves  and  never  rest, 
Until  we  reach  the  ripest  fruit  of  all, 
That  perfect  bliss  and  sole  felicity, 
The  sweet  fruition  of  an  earthly  crown." 

For  Tamburlaine  the  crown  was  the  summit,  but  in  the 
larger  yearning  of  the  speech,  in  such  a  line  as 

"Still  climbing  after  knowledge  infinite," 

is  the  keynote  of  Marlowe's  mood  in  all  ways.  The 
drama  itself  is  an  unchecked  torrent  of  words,  a  flood  of 
large  language;  it  has  an  imperial  breadth  of  flow,  and 
bears  the  kingdoms  like  islands  on  its  stream.  It  has 
become  a  synonym  for  bombast,  but  it  excites  and  ampli 
fies  the  imagination  by  its  spaciousness,  its  epithets  like 
"the  hundred-headed  Volga,"  and  its  terrible  energy. 
There  are  many  splendid  passages  of  impassioned  dic 
tion,  many  noble  lines  such  as  only  the  greatest  masters 
know  the  secret  of;  but  I  can  best  convey  to  you  that 
quality  which  I  wish  to  bring  out  —  the  new  Eliza- 


MARLOWE  195 

bethan  sense  of  the  largeness  of  the  earth  and  of  the 
dream  of  empire  over  it  —  by  the  scene  in  which  Tarn- 
burlaine  at  his  death  calls  for  the  map  of  the  world. 

"But  I  perceive  my  martial  strength  is  spent. 
In  vain  I  strive  and  rail  against  those  powers 
That  mean  to  invest  me  in  a  higher  throne  .   .    . 
Give  me  a  map;  then  let  me  see  how  much 
Is  left  for  me  to  conquer  all  the  world  .   .   . 
Here  I  began  to  march  toward  Persia, 
Along  Armenia  and  the  Caspian  Sea, 
And  thence  unto  Bithynia,  where  I  took 
The  Turk  and  his  great  empress  prisoners. 
Thence  marched  I  into  Egypt  and  Arabia; 
And  here,  not  far  from  Alexandria, 
Whereas  the  Terrene  and  the  Red  Sea  meet, 
Being  distant  less  than  full  a  hundred  leagues, 
I  meant  to  cut  a  channel  to  them  both, 
That  men  might  quickly  sail  to  India. 
From  thence  to  Nubia  near  Borno  lake, 
And  so  along  the  -^thiopean  Sea, 
Cutting  the  tropic  line  of  Capricorn, 
I  conquered  all  as  far  as  Zanzibar. 
Then  by  the  northern  part  of  Africa, 
I  came  at  last  to  Graecia,  and  from  thence 
To  Asia,  where  I  stay  against  my  will:  — 
Which  is,  from  Scythia  where  I  first  began, 
Backwards  and  forwards,  near  five  thousand  leagues. 
Look  here,  my  boys ;  see  what  a  world  of  ground 
Lies  westward  from  the  midst  of  Cancer's  line 
Unto  the  rising  of  this  earthly  globe; 
Whereas  the  sun,  declining  from  our  sight, 
Begins  the  day  with  our  Antipodes! 
And  shall  I  die,  and  this  unconquered? 
Lo,  here,  my  sons,  are  all  the  golden  mines, 
Inestimable  drugs  and  precious  stones, 
More  worth  than  Asia  and  the  world  beside; 
And  from  the  Antarctic  Pole  eastward  behold 


i96  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

As  much  more  land,  which  never  was  descried, 
Wherein  are  rocks  of  pearl  that  shine  as  bright 
As  all  the  lamps  that  beautify  the  sky ! 
And  shall  I  die,  and  this  unconquered?" 

In  this  passage  we  are  in  the  world  that  Columbus  and 
the  great  voyagers  discovered,  and  breathe  its  air  as  fresh 
as  in  those  Elizabethan  mornings  when  the  wonder  was 
still  on  it. 

In  "The  Jew  of  Malta"  Marlowe  selected  the  second 
primary  passion  of  man,  the  lust  for  gold,  and  he  made 
Barabas  a  type  of  the  love  of  wealth,  as  prodigal  as  was 
Tamburlaine  of  the  love  of  empire.  He  it  was  from 
whose  lips  dropped  the  line 

"Infinite  riches  in  a  little  room," 

and  illustrated  it  by  that  glittering  hoard  which  shows  in 
fewest  words  the  lavishness  that  is  a  constant  trait  of 
Marlowe:  — 

"Bags  of  fiery  opals,  sapphires,  amethysts, 
Jacinths,  hard  topaz,  grass-green  emeralds, 
Beauteous  rubies,  sparkling  diamonds, 
And  seld-seen  costly  stones  of  so  great  price 
As  one  of  them  indifferently  rated  .    .    . 
May  serve  in  peril  of  calamity 
To  ransom  great  kings  from  captivity." 

The  passion  of  the  Jew,  like  that  of  the  conqueror,  is 
single  and  alone.  Marlowe  desired  a  more  unlimited 
play  for  the  soul's  infinite  capacity,  and  in  "Doctor 
Faustus"  he  showed  that  multiple  thirst,  which  was  the 
very  image  of  the  Renaissance,  that  thirst  to  exhaust  all 
natures  by  possessing  them,  which  only  the  secrets  of 
magic  could  satisfy  and  allay,  but  which  was  a  passion 
so  deep-seated  that  the  scholar  would  barter  his  soul 


MARLOWE  I97 

in  exchange  for  that  means  of  power.  At  this  price 
Faustus  obtained  the  satisfaction  of  every  wish  and  was 
as  supreme  in  this  empire  of  the  mind  as  Tamburlaine 
had  been  in  the  kingdoms  of  the  world. 

Infinite  empire,  infinite  riches,  infinite  satisfaction  of 
desire,  are  thus  the  three  great  themes  of  Marlowe,  in 
these  most  characteristic  plays;  the  desire,  the  passion, 
and  the  power  of  life  on  a  grand  scale  filled  his  mind, 
and  gave  his  imagination  that  grandiloquence  which  is 
the  trait  by  which  he  is  most  eminent  in  men's  memories. 
He  had  thus  discovered  passion  as  the  substance  of  the 
drama,  and  had  created  great  embodiments  of  it  in  char 
acters  that  remain  types  never  to  be  forgotten  of  the 
passion  he  delineated  in  each.  To  put  the  fact  in  a  differ 
ent  way,  he  was  the  first  great  psychologist  in  English 
drama;  he  created  psychology  in  it  as  a  dramatic  theme. 
He  conceived  these  primary  passions  somewhat  simply 
and  abstractly,  elementally;  but  in  these  plays  he  had 
already  begun  to  find  the  counterfoil  to  passion,  which 
is  the  other  half  of  dramatic  art,  namely,  the  event;  and 
as  he  went  on  in  his -art,  and  grasped  the  interplay  of  pas 
sion  and  circumstance  which  makes  tragedy  whole  and 
complete  as  an  image  of  human  life,  he  guided  the  art 
into  its  proper  element,  history.  That  was  his  second 
great  achievement  as  a  fashioner  of  the  drama  in  his  day. 
In  the  earlier  plays  he  had  given  passion  its  career  in 
an  ideal  world;  in  "Edward  II"  he  seized  upon  it  in  its 
confining  bounds  of  history,  and  his  work  at  once  gained 
complexity  and  reality,  or  what  is  called  probability;  it 
became  lifelike.  It  must  be  acknowledged  that  there  is 
more  vitality  in  "Edward  II"  than  in  Shakespeare's  more 
expert  development  of  the  same  theme  in  "Richard  II." 
Richard  suffers  in  his  imagination,  in  his  kingship,  in 


ig8  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

his  idea  of  himself;  but  Edward  suffers  in  his  heart,  and 
is  hi  all  ways  warmer,  tenderer,  more  manly.  It  was  by 
this  resort  to  history  as  the  element  of  human  drama  that 
Marlowe  obtained  this  vitality  in  the  characters  and  ac 
tuality  in  the  events;  and  by  his  example  he  put  into 
Shakespeare's  hands  his  'prentice  work  in  the  historical 
plays,  as  he  had  already  directed  his  interest  to  the  psy 
chology  of  the  human  spirit  and  the  career  of  great  pas 
sions  in  exalted  types  of  the  imagination.  Marlowe  was 
in  these  ways  the  forerunner,  not  only  of  Shakespeare, 
but  of  the  dramatic  age. 

Marlowe  performed  another  service,  not  only  for  the 
drama,  but  for  English  literature,  and  one  that  is  for 
ever  associated  with  his  name.  He  gave  to  English 
poetry  its  best  instrument  of  expression  —  blank  verse. 
It  is  true  that  blank  verse  had  been  used  before  and  upon 
the  stage;  but  it  was  Marlowe's  distinction  to  develop 
the  melody  and  rhetoric  of  blank  verse,  to  give  it  elo 
quence,  ardor,  and  passion,  to  make  it  throb  and  live; 
and  from  him,  again,  Shakespeare  took  it  and  through 
successive  years  molded  and  shaped  it,  made  it  flexible 
and  plastic,  till  it  became  the  most  vital  form  of  English 
speech.  In  Marlowe  the  line  is  still  in  its  elementary 
stage;  its  value  is  there,  but  its  value  is  often  too  ex 
clusively  a  monotone  and  too  frequently  merely  sonorous; 
the  repetition  is  tedious,  the  sound  is  swelling  and  bom 
bastic;  on  the  other  hand,  it  should  be  remembered  that 
this  sounding  and  gorgeous  oratory,  together  with  the 
eloquence  and  rhetoric,  the  excess  of  rich  detail,  the  pic- 
turesqueness  and  ornament,  the  lavish  fancy,  all  taken 
in  one,  was  a  means  of  securing  that  illusion  of  the  imagi 
nation  of  which  the  bare  and  ill-furnished  scenic  stage 
of  Elizabeth  stood  so  greatly  in  need.  In  a  certain  way 


MARLOWE  199 

this  ranting  and  profuse  language  was  a  substitute  for 
scenery,  and  helped  to  give  the  necessary  elevation  to 
the  mimic  stage.  In  his  employment  of  blank  verse, 
too,  Marlowe  showed  the  same  rapid  progress  in  the 
power  of  his  art  that  distinguished  him  in  characteriza 
tion  and  in  plot;  and  as  he  became  accustomed  to  the 
measure,  he  dissolved  its  original  monotone,  broke  it 
up  into  true  melody,  while  at  the  same  time  he  gathered 
temperance  and  kept  nearer  to  the  natural  language  of 
high  passion,  as  in  the  great  scenes  of  "Edward  II"  and 
of  "Doctor  Faustus."  In  all  this,  as  in  the  rest  of  his 
art,  he  was  a  bold  experimenter  and  learned  by  doing; 
but  just  as  there  was  a  gift  of  nature  which  underlay  his 
sympathy  with  great  passions,  that  Dionysiac  daemonic 
force  within  himself,  so  there  was  a  gift  of  nature  be 
neath  his  "mighty  line."  Style,  the  power  and  the  feel 
ing  for  noble  language,  was  born  in  him;  that  aliquid 
immensum  infinitumque  that  Cicero  desired  in  the  ora 
tor  was  innate  in  Marlowe;  it  was  not  merely  the  large 
words  and  rolling  cadences  upon  his  lips,  but  throughout 
the  poet's  make  there  was  the  sense  and  feeling  of  the 
infinite,  seen  at  the  lowest  in  the  profusion  of  his  fancy, 
and  at  the  highest  in  the  reach  of  his  imagination  in  his 
great  tragic  scenes,  but  most  apparent  and  condensed 
perhaps  in  that  passage  on  poetic  expression  which  no 
lover  of  Marlowe  can  forbear  to  quote,  though  it  be 
familiar: 

"If  all  the  pens  that  ever  poets  held 
Had  fed  the  feeling  of  their  masters'  thoughts, 
And  every  sweetness  that  inspired  their  hearts, 
Their  minds,  and  muses  on  admired  themes; 
If  all  the  heavenly  quintessence  they  still 
From  their  immortal  flowers  of  poesy 


200  THE   INSPIRATION    OF    POETRY 

Wherein,  as  in  a  mirror,  we  perceive 
The  highest  reaches  of  a  human  wit:  — 
If  these  had  made  one  poem's  period, 
And  all  combined  in  beauty's  worthiness, 
Yet  should  there  hover  in  their  restless  heads 
One  thought,  one  grace,  one  wonder,  at  the  least, 
Which  into  words  no  virtue  can  digest." 

The  feeling  of  the  inexpressible,  which  is  in  literature  the 
sense  of  the  infinite,  was  never  told  with  more  heart-felt 
conviction  than  in  these  lines.  The  style  of  Marlowe, 
as  lofty  as  it  is  rich,  where  every  line  brims  to  the 
rim  with  melody  or  beauty  or  high  feeling,  is  such  as 
belongs  to  the  man.  It  was  Shakespeare's  best  fortune 
that  he  caught  the  golden  cadence  of  his  youth  from 
such  a  master's  lips. 

Marlowe  died  at  the  age  of  thirty,  and  left  this  mem 
ory  of  himself  which  for  splendor  and  beauty  is  fitly 
symbolized  by  the  image  of  the  morning  star  which  has 
been  so  freely  applied  to  him.  It  is  not  because  of  the 
perfection  of  his  works  that  he  is  remembered;  he  left 
no  single  work  of  the  first  rank;  a  developed  art  is  the 
prerequisite  of  great  literature.  He  did  not  so  much 
create  great  works  as  he  rather  originated  the  art  itself 
by  which  great  works  should  in  their  time  be  accom 
plished.  I  have  indicated  the  specific  service  he  thus 
rendered  by  concentrating  the  drama  on  passion,  by  send 
ing  it  to  history  to  school,  and  by  giving  it  the  instru 
ment  of  blank  verse;  but  I  have  not  meant  thereby  to 
trace  his  historical  significance,  but  to  show  forth  more 
fully  the  strength  that  was  in  him,  the  immense  poetic 
energy  of  which  his  genius  was  the  phenomenon.  He 
had  the  warmth  and  susceptibility  of  a  youthful  poet, 
but  he  had  also  a  greatness  of  soul  which  we  associate 


MARLOWE  201 

with  more  manly  years.  He  was  an  emanation  of  the 
Renaissance,  one  of  that  new  brood  of  men  which  was 
like  a  new  creation  in  the  ranks  of  the  angels  of  power. 
He  was  a  forward-looking  spirit;  no  fiber  in  him  looked 
backward  to  the  past;  he  was  revolutionary.  He  was 
full  of  mastership;  no  part  of  his  nature  went  in  leash 
to  any  power  in  heaven  or  on  earth;  he  was  free.  He 
was  lawless,  even,  as  it  is  the  lot  of  genius  to  be  because 
of  the  prophetic  element  in  it  by  which  it  belongs  to  a 
world  not  yet  come  into  being.  More  than  any  of  his 
fellows,  more  even  than  Shakespeare  to  me,  he  seems 
self-absorbed  in  his  own  other  world  of  imaginative  art, 
and  living  there  as  in  his  own  bright,  particular  star. 
He  is  the  very  type  of  genius,  as  I  have  said. —  the 
naked  form  of  it  —  as  bright,  as  beautiful,  as  neglectful 
of  mankind,  as  free  from  any  regards  of  earth  as  an 
antique  statue  that  gives  to  our  eyes  the  mortal  aspect 
of  a  god. 


Ill 

CAMOENS 

CAMOENS,  the  maker  of  the  only  truly  modern  epic, 
offers  an  illustration  of  poetic  power  which  is  to  me  one  of 
the  most  interesting,  although  the  foreignness  of  his  sub 
ject-matter  and  the  extraordinary  lameness  of  its  Eng 
lish  translations  make  difficult  obstacles  to  our  apprecia 
tion;  but  for  that  very  reason  he  has  the  happiest  fortune 
that  can  fall  to  a  poet  in  the  fact  that  familiarity  ever 
endears  him  the  more.  He  is  a  less  pure  type  of  the 
flame  of  genius  than  Marlowe;  poetic  energy  appears 
in  him  less  a  spiritual  power  dwelling  in  its  own  realm  of 
imagination;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  his  career  admits 
us  to  a  nearer  view  of  a  poet's  human  life,  to  what  ac 
tually  befalls  the  man  so  doubtfully  endowed  with  that 
inward  passion  of  life,  in  the  days  and  weeks  and  years 
of  his  journey.  Scarce  any  poet  is  so  autobiographical 
in  the  strict  sense.  Others  have  made  themselves  the 
subject  of  their  song;  but  usually,  like  Shelley,  they 
exhibit  an  ideal  self  seen  under  imaginative  lights  and 
through  the  soul's  atmosphere,  and  in  these  self-por 
traits  half  the  lines  are  aspiration  realized,  the  self  they 
dream  of;  but  Camoens  shows  in  his  verse  as  he  was  in 
life,  with  a  naturalness  and  vigor,  with  an  unconscious 
realism,  a  directness,  an  intensity  and  openness  that  give 
him  to  us  as  a  comrade. 

He  was  of  the  old  blue  blood  of  the  Peninsula,  the 

203 


204  THE   INSPIRATION   OF    POETRY 

Gothic  blood,  the  same  that  gave  birth  to  Cervantes. 
He  was  blond,  and  bright-haired,  with  blue  eyes,  large 
and  lively,  the  face  oval  and  ruddy  —  and  in  manhood 
the  beard  short  and  rounded,  with  long  untrimmed 
mustachios  —  the  forehead  high,  the  nose  aquiline;  in 
figure  agile  and  robust;  in  action  "quick  to  draw  and 
slow  to  sheathe,"  and  when  he  was  young,  he  writes  that 
he  had  seen  the  heels  of  many,  but  none  had  seen  his 
heels.  Born  about  the  year  1524,  of  a  noble  and  well- 
connected  family,  educated  at  Coimbra,  a  university 
famous  for  the  classics,  and  launched  in  life  about 
the  court  at  Lisbon,  he  was  no  sooner  his  own  master 
than  he  fell  into  troubles.  He  was  a  lover  born, 
and  the  name  of  his  lady,  Caterina,  is  the  first  that 
emerges  in  his  life;  for  such  Romeo-daring  he  was  ban 
ished  from  court  when  he  was  about  twenty,  whether 
after  a  duel  or  a  stolen  interview  is  uncertain;  and  on 
his  return,  since  he  continued  faithful  to  his  lady,  he 
was  sent  into  Africa,  and  in  an  engagement  with  pirates 
in  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar  he  lost  his  right  eye.  He 
fought  the  Moors  for  three  years  until  he  was  twenty- 
five,  and  returning  to  Lisbon,  enlisted  for  the  Indies; 
but  in  consequence  of  a  street  affair  with  swords  in  which 
he  drew  in  defense  of  some  masked  ladies  and  unfortu 
nately  wounded  a  palace  servant,  he  was  held  in  prison 
three  years.  Eleven  days  after  his  release  he  sailed, 
and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  his  sailing  was  a  condition  of 
his  release.  He  rounded  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and 
came  to  India,  where  he  served  in  campaigns  and  garri 
son,  and  occasionally  held  official  appointments,  and 
from  time  to  time  fell  into  prison.  He  cleared  himself 
from  all  charges  of  wrong-doing  in  office;  but  he  was  of 
the  type  that  makes  both  enemies  and  friends.  He  was 


CAMOENS  205 

outspoken,  and  he  indulged  his  mood  in  satire,  a  dan 
gerous  employment  in  the  narrowness  of  colonial  and 
army  life.  On  the  other  hand,  he  was  a  brave  and  gentle 
comrade  and  delighted  in  manly  traits;  and  so  there  was 
a  round  of  companions  in  arms  to  whom  he  was  dear. 
He  served  far  and  wide,  fought  on  the  coasts  of  the  Red 
Sea,  wintered  in  Ormuz  in  the  Persian  Gulf,  spent  some 
years  in  China,  and  seems  to  have  visited  the  Malay 
islands;  once  he  was  shipwrecked  on  the  Chinese  coast. 
It  is  clear  that  he  roamed  the  Orient  on  all  the  lines 
of  travel  and  enterprise,  of  commerce  and  war,  wherever 
the  Portuguese  ships  could  sail,  and  bore  throughout 
the  name  and  character  of  a  gentleman-adventurer  of 
that  world,  a  daring,  enterprising,  hopeful,  unfortunate, 
and  often  distressed  man. 

Sixteen  years  of  his  manhood  passed  in  these  toils  — 

"In  one  hand  aye  the  Sword,  in  one  the  Pen," 

—  along  the  tropical  seas  and  under  the  alien  skies;  for 
from  the  first,  even  before  in  his  youth  he  planted  a  lance 
in  Africa,  he  had  held  to  his  breast  that  little  manuscript 
book  where  year  by  year,  on  the  deck  and  the  gun-breech, 
in  his  grotto  at  Macao,  in  prison,  wherever  he  might  be 
and  under  whatever  aspect  of  fortune,  he  wrote  down 
the  growing  lines  of  that  poem  which  is  now  the  chief 
glory  of  his  native  land.  When  he  was  shipwrecked  in 
China,  he  lost  the  little  store  of  gold  that  he  had  accu 
mulated  in  the  office  which  he  was  recalled  from,  but  he 
held  safe  this  book  — 

"In  his  embrace  the  song  that  swam  to  land 
From  sad  and  piteous  shipwreck  dripping  wet 
'Scaped  from  the  reefs  and  rocks  that  fang  the 
strand." 


206  THE  INSPIRATION  OF   POETRY 

Now,  after  sixteen  years,  nostalgia,  not  simple  home 
sickness,  but  the  nostalgia  of  him  who  fares  forth  into 
the  world  and  voyages  long  in  stranger-lands,  had  fallen 
on  him,  and  was  heavy  in  all  his  spirit.  He  had  left 
Portugal,  indignantly  saying  that  his  country  should  not 
possess  his  bones;  but  he  had  long  changed  this  temper  — 

"Tagus  yet  pealeth  with  the  passion  caught 
From  the  wild  cry  he  flung  across  the  sea";  — 

all  his  hopes  had  really  rested  on  the  honor  of  the  song 
he  had  built  up  for  the  glory  of  Portugal,  and  while  every 
thing  else  that  men  name  success  faded  away  and  escaped 
him,  with  this  poem  surely  he  would  find  welcome  home. 
He  stopped  at  Mozambique  with  the  captain  governor, 
and  when  he  wished  to  continue  his  voyage,  this  officer, 
who  was  his  host,  consigned  him  to  prison  for  a  debt  due 
himself,  a  small  sum.  Soon  afterwards,  however,  a  ship 
came  by,  with  a  dozen  of  Camoens'  old  messmates  and 
friends,  veterans,  and  they  contributed  the  money  for  his 
release.  So,  says  the  old  biographer,  "were  simultane 
ously  sold  the  person  of  Camoens  and  the  honor  of  Pedro 
Barreto"  for  £25.  With  these  friends  Camoens  sailed 
homeward,  and  arrived  safely,  but  not  to  find  prosperity. 
It  was  three  years  before  his  book  was  published;  and 
he  received  for  reward  only  a  pension  of  about  one  hun 
dred  dollars  in  our  money  at  its  present  worth,  and  this 
was  not  often  paid.  The  entire  eight  years  of  his  life  at 
Lisbon  were  filled  with  such  poverty  and  distress  as  we 
remember  of  the  last  dying  days  of  Spenser  and  Chatter- 
ton.  He  lived  some  part  of  this  time  in  a  religious  house, 
that  is,  an  almshouse;  at  other  times  his  Javanese  servant, 
who  had  stayed  with  him,  begged  food  for  him  at  night, 
but  the  faithful  servant  died  before  his  wretched  master. 


CAMOENS  207 

Even  among  the  poets  few  have  been  so  homeless  and 
destitute  as  Camoens  in  his  life's  end,  now  going  about 
on  crutches  and  suffering  the  last  sad  effects  of  a  hard- 
faring  life.  It  was  the  moment  just  before  his  death  when 
the  power  of  Portugal  was  extinguished  on  the  battle 
field  by  Philip  of  Spain:  "I  die,"  he  wrote  to  a  friend, 
"not  only  in  my  country,  but  with  it."  The  time  of 
his  death  is  uncertain,  but  he  was  about  fifty-five  years 
old.  He  died  in  a  hospital.  "I  saw  him  die,"  says  an 
old  Carmelite  brother,  "in  the  hospital  of  Lisbon,  with 
out  a  sheet  wherewith  to  cover  himself."  Such  in  its 
external  events  was  the  life-story  of  Camoens. 

If  one  throws  upon  this  harsh  narrative  the  light  that 
flows  from  Camoens'  poetry,  the  lines  are  softened  in 
the  retrospect;  the  hardship  and  misfortune  are  seen  in 
that  atmosphere  of  melancholy  that  pervades  his  strong 
verse  and  blends  with  it,  as  tenderness  companions  valor 
in  the  man  himself.  To  see  properly  the  phases  of  his 
genius,  one  should  glance  first  at  the  lyrical  works,  and 
especially  the  sonnets,  that  preceded  and  accompanied 
the  heroic  verse  of  the  epic.  From  his  student  days  at 
the  university,  unlike  Marlowe,  he  was  the  heir  of  a 
developed  art,  and  in  all  his  work  is  seen  the  fair  back 
ground  of  the  poetic  tradition  —  in  the  epic  the  forms 
of  old  mythology,  and  in  the  lyrics  the  Italian  example 
of  Petrarch.  To  him  his  lady  Caterina  was  what  Pe 
trarch's  Laura  had  been,  an  ideal  of  hopeless  and  pure 
passion.  Her  personality  is  not  definitely  known,  but 
she  married  and  died  while  still  young.  Though  in  his 
sonnets  to  her  Camoens  followed  the  poetic  tradition, 
the  reality  of  his  devotion  cannot  be  doubted  in  its  in 
ception;  and  in  its  continuance  through  the  years  of 
his  youth,  and  especially  of  his  long  exile  in  the  Orient, 


208  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

this  ideal  passion  stood  for  him,  at  least,  as  the  sign  and 
certainty  of  his  first  failure  —  his  failure  in  love.  It 
became,  perhaps,  after  long  and  hopeless  years  simply 
the  cry  of  his  imagination,  but  it  had  its  original  being 
in  the  call  of  the  heart.  Very  sweet  and  noble,  though 
conventional,  is  his  early  pleading:  — 

"Beautiful  eyes,  whereof  the  sunny  sphere 
When  most  with  cloudless  clarity  of  light 
The  infinite  expanse  he  maketh  bright, 
Doubting  to  be  eclipsed,  doth  stand  in  fear: 
If  I  am  held  in  scorn  who  hold  you  dear, 
Then,  having  of  all  things  such  perfect  sight, 
Consider  this  thing  too,  that  mortal  night 
To  cover  up  your  beauty  draweth  near. 
Gather,  O  gather  with  unstaying  hand, 
The  fruits  that  must  together  gathered  be, 
Occasion  ripe,  and  Passion's  clasp  divine. 
And,  since  by  you  I  live  and  die,  command 
Love,  that  he  yield  his  tribute  unto  me, 
Who  unto  you  have  freely  yielded  mine." 

After  years  of  vain  castle-building  during  which  he 
seemed  his  "own  sorrow's  architect,"  and  in  that  wide 
roaming  which  he  describes  — 

"Now  scattering  my  music  as  I  pass, 
The  world  I  range, — 

he  still  kept  true  to  the  lover's  creed:  — 

"All  evils  Love  can  wreak  behold  in  me, 
In  whom  the  utmost  of  his  power  malign 
He  willed  unto  the  world  to  manifest: 
But  I,  like  him,  would  have  these  things  to  be. 
Lifted  by  woe  to  ecstasy  divine, 
I  would  not  change  for  all  the  world  possest." 

When  his  lady  died,  he  lifted  his  prayer  in  his  loveliest 
and  most  famous  sonnet  — 


CAMOENS  209 

% 

"Soul  of  my  soul,  that  didst  so  early  wing 
From  our  poor  world  thou  heldest  in  disdain, 
Bound  be  I  ever  to  my  mortal  pain, 
So  thou  hast  peace  before  the  Eternal  King! 
If  to  the  realms  where  thou  dost  soar  and  sing 
Remembrance  of  aught  earthly  may  attain, 
Forget  not  the  deep  love  thou  did'st  so  fain 
Discover  my  fond  eyes  inhabiting. 
And  if  my  yearning  heart  unsatisfied, 
And  pang  on  earth  incurable  have  might 
To  profit  thee  and  me,  pour  multiplied 
Thy  meek  entreaties  to  the  Lord  of  Light, 
That  swiftly  He  would  raise  me  to  thy  side, 
As  suddenly  He  rapt  thee  from  my  sight." 

In  these  sonnets  and  other  lyrical  poems  the  poet  is 
hardly  more  personal  than  in  the  heroic  epic,  but  his  per 
sonality  is  more  exclusively  felt,  and  the  topics  are  not 
confined  to  his  love.  The  most  lasting  impression  made 
is  of  the  passing  of  hope  out  of  his  life.  Camoens  was 
one  of  those  souls  who  are  great  in  hope;  and  he  often 
bent  upon  the  past  reverted  eyes,  and  drew  the  sum  of  his 
losses,  ending  in  the  refrain  — 

"For  Death  and  Disenchantment  all  was  made  — 
Woe  unto  all  that  hope!  to  all  that  trust!" 

The  vein  of  melancholy  in  the  lyrical  poems  opens  the 
tenderness  of  Camoens,  and  perhaps  the  softer  note  is 
somewhat  overcharged  in  these  admirable  but  rather  Ital- 
ianated  version  of  Dr.  Garnett's  that  I  have  used;  life- 
weariness  and  profound  discouragement,  indeed,  there  is 
in  them;  but  they  are  not  the  simple  outflow  of  a  Pe 
trarchan  lover's  complaint,  but  the  sorrows  of  a  much- 
toiling  man;  for  Camoens  was  both  sailor  and  soldier, 
and  as  natural  to  those  ways  of  labor  as  to  the  handling 


2io  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

of  the  lute.  The  voyage,  the  march,  and  the  battle  made 
up  the  larger  part  of  his  life. 

This  opens  the  second  trait  to  be  observed  in  the  phases 
of  his  development,  namely,  his  absorption  of  the  patri 
otic  vitality  of  his  country.  It  is  true  that  he  inherited 
a  developed  and  conventionalized  art,  and  had  always 
that  fair  background  of  classical  figures  and  Italian  at 
mosphere  which  were  his  portion  of  the  Renaissance; 
but  the  Renaissance  was  rather  like  a  little  mountain 
city  where  he  was  born  and  drank  his  youth;  he  did 
not  abide  there,  but  came  down  into  the  great  modern 
world  that  was  then  to  be  —  the  world  of  the  waste  of 
waters  and  the  spreading  empires.  Portugal  played  a 
great  part  in  that  age  which  broke  the  horizon  bars  and 
passed  the  western  and  the  eastern  limit  of  the  sun  alike, 
and  made  the  fleets  as  free  of  the  ocean  as  the  sea-birds 
of  every  wandering  wave.  Camoens  was  to  make  this 
the  great  theme  of  his  song  —  the  ocean  fame  of  Portu 
gal.  But  he  was  inducted  into  his  passion  of  patriotism 
by  natural  ways,  before  the  glory  of  the  ocean  discoveries 
was  fully  opened  in  his  mind.  Portugal,  you  remember, 
was  the  child  of  battle,  born  of  the  conflict  of  the  Chris 
tian  and  the  Moor;  on  the  stricken  field  she  found  her 
crown  itself,  and  became  a  state,  and  in  maintaining  the 
struggle  that  drove  the  Crescent  back  into  Africa,  and 
in  following  across  the  straits  to  free  the  seaboard,  she 
developed  her  strength,  laid  up  her  most  heroic  memo 
ries,  and  built  those  navies  that  were  to  open  and  com 
mand  so  many  seas. 

When  Camoens  in  his  youth  fought  his  first  campaigns 
in  Africa,  he  was  united  with  his  country's  cause  and 
honor  in  its  great  historic  current,  and  it  was  by  nature 
that  there  flamed  up  in  him  that  national  pride,  hating 


CAMOENS  an 

»* 

and  triumphing  over  the  Moor,  which  is  the  historic 
substance  of  his  epic.  He  had  found  his  theme  in  battling 
with  the  Moorish  power.  The  realization  of  this  theme, 
the  patriotic  past  of  his  country,  was  the  second  phase 
of  his  development.  Then  came,  with  his  long  and 
perilous  voyage  and  his  years  of  wanderings  through  all 
the  picturesque  coasts  of  the  East,  that  expansion  and 
enrichment  of  his  theme  which  reduced  the  original 
Moorish  battle  to  the  rank  of  episode  and  background, 
while  the  maritime  greatness  of  Portugal,  set  forth  in 
the  story  of  the  voyage  of  Da  Gama  round  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope  as  the  main  action,  became  the  more  promi 
nent  subject.  The  poem  itself  yields  these  three  main 
elements  corresponding  to  the  division  that  has  been 
made:  the  background  of  classical  mythology,  which 
affords  the  mechanism  of  the  plot,  and  is  of  the  Renais 
sance;  the  history  of  Portugal  which  affords  the  time 
perspectives  and  the  main  episodes;  and  lastly  the  for 
tunes  of  Da  Gama.  The  poem  thus  grew  with  Camoens' 
own  growth,  and  contains  his  artistic  training  in  the 
school  of  Renaissance  tradition,  his  youthful  African 
marches  and  raids,  and  his  manhood  voyages.  He  made 
it  embrace  the  whole  glory  of  Portugal,  compressed  into 
its  stanzas  all  her  romance,  heroism,  and  fable  from  the 
earliest  record  in  antique  days  to  his  own  hour,  spread 
in  it  the  naval  dominion  of  her  great  contemporary  age; 
and  he  did  this,  not  as  a  reminiscent  scholar  in  VirgiPs 
way  or  Tasso's  way,  but  as  one  who  had  labored  in  the 
glorious  action  by  sea  and  land,  near  the  port  and  far  in 
the  open,  boy  and  man,  with  sword  and  pen.  The  en 
thusiasm  of  a  lifetime  here  gathers  and  gives  out  the 
passion  of  a  whole  nation  and  makes  a  people's  glory  one 
with  the  poet's  fame.  The  "Lusiads"  is  the  principal 


212  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

monument  of  Portugal,  and  the  chief  national  bond  that 
binds  her  children  in  one. 

It  is  this  infusion  of  personality  —  and  personality 
like  Marlowe's  of  the  daring  Renaissance  type  —  which 
makes  the  "Lusiads"  so  different  from  all  other  epics. 
The  theme  is  not  presented  as  an  ideal  action  in  remote 
time  after  the  manner  of  other  poets,  but  seems  a  real 
event,  something  that  the  poet  had  done  and  been.  It 
is  as  if  Ulysses  had  written  the  "Odyssey."  Gamoens 
was  himself,  like  Ulysses,  such  a  traveler,  a  romantic 
wanderer,  a  hard-toiling  man,  in  the  heroic  exile  of 
enterprise  on  the  sea-edges  of  a  larger  and  unknown 
world.  It  is  this  temperament  of  the  wanderer  that  so 
endears  him  to  all  nomad  souls.  It  is  this  which  made 
him  attractive  to  Captain  Burton,  for  example,  who 
made  the  labor  of  translating  his  works  a  part  of  his  task 
for  twenty  years;  and  though  it  is  marvelously  unread 
able,  it  is  from  his  translation  that  I  shall  quote;  for  at 
times,  and  not  seldom,  he  catches  the  spirit  of  Camoens 
as  the  sail  catches  the  wind.  The  "Lusiads"  is  a  sea- 
poem.  No  poem  approaches  it  in  maritime  quality  ex 
cept  the  "Odyssey."  The  note  of  the  whole  is  struck  in 
Da  Gama's  account  of  the  setting  sail  of  the  fleet  from 
Lisbon:  — 

"We  from  the  well-known  port  went  sorrowing, 
After  the  manner  of  far-faring  men." 

The  fleet  made  out  to  sea,  and  this  is  the  parting 
view:  — 

"Slow,  ever  slower,  banisht  from  our  eyne, 
Vanisht  our  native  hills,  astern  remaining; 
Remained  dear  Tagus,  and  the  breezy  line 
Of  Cintran  peaks,  long,  long,  our  gaze  detaining; 


CAMOENS  213 

Remained  eke  in  that  dear  country  mine 
Our  hearts,  with  pangs  of  memory  ever  paining ; 
Till,  when  all  veiled  sank  in  darkling  air, 
Naught  but  the  welkin  and  the  wave  was  there." 

The  sense  not  only  of  the  deep  sea,  as  in  this  last  line, 
but  of  the  undiscovered,  is  constantly  present  —  not  only 
the  illiminitable  waste  of  waters,  but  the  peril  of  them. 
It  is  a  growing  peril,  vaguely  felt  at  first  beside  the  new 
islands  and  capes  lately  discovered,  in  the  strangeness 
of  the  coasts  by  which  the  ships  drop  southward,  in 
the  adventures  with  the  unfamiliar  tribes  at  the  land 
falls;  but  the  strangeness  becomes  peril,  slowly  and 
surely  —  that  panic  fear  which  is  not  for  a  moment  of 
alarm  but  for  days  and  nights  of  increasing  dread  —  the 
mood  which  all  great  explorers  have  known,  from  Colum 
bus  to  the  latest,  who  have  had  to  master  their  men  with 
the  desperate  force  of  a  higher  courage  and  hold  them 
to  the  onward  course.  It  is  this  gigantic  fear,  rising 
from  the  endless  rolling  of  the  sea  and  driving  of  the 
cloudy  winds  in  the  pathless  ways  of  the  lonely  sail  — 
it  is  this  fear  that  Camoens  gives  body  and  a  name  in 
the  most  daring  and  perhaps  the  most  celebrated  of  the 
inventions  of  his  fancy  —  the  apparition  of  the  giant 
phantom,  Adamastor,  off  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope. 
Adamastor  symbolizes  the  dangers  of  the  ocean  enter 
prise  and  the  revenge  of  the  elements  outraged  by  the 
human  victory  over  their  brute  power. 

What  Camoens  there  renders  by  imagination  and  alle 
gory  he  draws  again  realistically  in  the  account  of  the 
storm  in  the  Indian  Ocean.  The  storm  in  Shakespeare's 
"Tempest"  is  the  only  sea-storm  that  compares  with  it 
for  majesty  and  violence,  and  at  the  same  time  for  truth 
to  sea-weather.  The  little  picture  of  the  nightwatch  on 


214  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

deck  with  which  the  scene  opens  gives  perhaps  in  briefest 
space  that  unaffected  naturalism  which  distinguishes 
Camoens'  descriptions  of  actuality:  — 

"All  half-numbed  and  chill 
Shivered  with  many  a  yawn  the  huddling  crew 
Beneath  the  bulging  mainsail,  clothed  ill 
To  bear  the  nightly  breath  that  keenly  blew; 
Their  eyes  kept  open  sore  against  their  will 
They  rubbed  and  stretched  their  torpid  limbs  anew,"  — 

and  to  keep  awake  they  begin  to  spin  yarns;  in  this 
case  the  fine  chivalric  tale  of  the  Twelve  of  England  — 
in  the  course  of  which  the  storm  breaks  on  them  with 
tropic  suddenness. 

The  labor  of  the  life  is  thus  a  main  element  in  the 
poem,  which  is  solid  with  experience  and  somber  with  it, 
also.  Camoens  delighted  in  his  companions,  those  vas 
sals  of  the  king,  "peerless  in  their  worth,"  but  it  is  the 
darker  side  of  their  lives  that  holds  his  imagination  and 
memory  alike:  — 

"Look  how  they  gladly  wend  by  many  a  way:  — 
Self-doomed  to  sleepless  night  and  foodless  day, 
To  fire  and  steel,  shaft-shower,  and  bullet-flight; 
To  torrid  Tropics,  Arctics  frore  and  gray, 
The  Pagan's  buffet  and  the  Moor's  despite; 
To  risks  invisible,  threatening  human  life, 
To  wreck,  sea-monsters  and  the  wave's  wild  strife." 

The  lonely  death  in  a  foreign  land,  always  near  in 
the  prospect,  imparts  a  deep  melancholy  to  the  verse, 
that  true  epic  melancholy,  which  Virgil  summed  in  that 
one  of  his  most  immortal  lines  where  the  dying  soldier 
"remembers  sweet  Argos."  Camoens  was  a  man  of 
friendships,  of  that  comradeship  which  flowers  only  in 
such  hardy  soil,  and  many  of  his  verses  lament  the  un- 


CAMOENS  215 

timely  death  of  the  brave  heart  in  its  youth.  One  son 
net  on  the  death  of  a  comrade  in  Africa,  in  the  form  of 
an  epitaph  spoken  by  the  victim,  best  tells  the  story:  — -. 

"Few  years  and  evil  to  my  life  were  lent, 
All  with  hard  toil  and  misery  replete: 
Light  did  so  swiftly  from  my  eyes  retreat, 
That  ere  five  lusters  quite  were  gone,  I  went. 
Ocean  I  roamed  and  isle  and  continent, 
Seeking  some  remedy  for  life  unsweet; 
But  he  whom  Fortune  will  not  frankly  meet, 
Vainly  by  venture  woos  her  to  his  bent. 
First  saw  I  light  in  Lusitanian  land, 
Where  Alemquer  the  blooming  nurtured  me; 
But,  feeble  foul  contagion  to  withstand, 
I  feed  the  fish's  maw  where  thou,  rude  sea, 
Lashest  the  churlish  Abyssinian  strand, 
Far  from  my  Portugal's  felicity." 

The  same  mood,  in  the  "Lusiads,"  fills  the  stanza  which 
he  dedicates  to  the  memory  of  all  who  fell  by  the  wave 
and  along  the  trail:  — 

"At  last  in  tangled  brake  and  unknown  ground 
Our  true  companions  lost  for  aye  we  leave, 
Who  mid  such  weary  ways,  such  dreary  round, 
Such  dread  adventures,  aidance  ever  gave. 
How  easy  for  man's  bones  a  grave  is  found! 
Earth's  any  wrinkle,  ocean's  any  wave, 
Whereso  the  long  home  be,  abroad,  at  home, 
For  every  hero's  corse  may  lend  a  tomb." 

Camoens  is  always  directly  faithful  to  the  daily  and 
hourly  life,  to  the  physical  scene  and  the  human  man 
ners;  but  his  truth  to  the  heroic  spirit,  the  martial 
breath  that  filled  the  sails  of  the  great  enterprise,  and 
also  his  truth  to  the  sentiment  of  the  wanderer,  the 


216  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

power  whereby  he  renders  the  melancholy  which  falls 
from  the  dry  and  sterile  Arabian  peaks  of  rose-red  rock, 
diffusing  that  nostalgia  of  the  brave  heart,  heightening 
all  that  bravery  so,  and  thereby  renews  for  us,  and  illu 
mines,  that  old  type  of  the  "much-enduring"  man  —  all 
this  constitutes  a  truth  for  which  reality  seems  but  a 
faint  and  shadowy  name.  It  is  the  truth  not  merely 
of  a  voyage,  but  of  man's  life  on  earth  —  such  as  it  is 
when  poetry  presents  it  most  nobly,  most  feelingly,  and 
without  a  veil.  To  Camoens  the  fortune  of  human  life 
showed  no  smiling  face;  it  was  not  in  fortune  but  in 
character  that  he  found  life's  value.  He  was  a  lover 
of  heroic  men,  those 

"By  the  doughty  arm  and  sword  that  chase 
Honor  which  man  may  proudly  hail  his  own ; 
In  weary  vigil,  in  the  steely  case, 
'Mid  wrathsome  winds  and  bitter  billows  thrown, 
Suff'ring  the  frigid  rigors  in  th'  embrace 
Of  South,  and  regions  lorn,  and  lere,  and  lone; 
Swallowing  the  tainted  rations'  scanty  dole, 
Salted  with  toil  of  body,  moil  of  soul." 

The  character  of  Da  Gama  is  very  nobly  drawn ;  he  is  all 
that  such  a  leader  should  be;  a  figure  worthy  of  his  place 
in  the  poem,  and  of  the  fame  to  which  he  is  exalted,  akin 
to  ^neas  before  him  and  to  Tasso's  Godfrey  who  was 
born  after  him.  Camoens'  morality,  his  conception  of 
the  character  of  "a  good  king,  a  great  captain,  a  wise 
councillor,  a  just  judge,  a  pure  priest,"  as  Burton  draws 
the  catalogue,  is  always  energetic  and  lofty.  Of  all  his 
personal  qualities  he  is  most  proud  of  his  own  independ 
ence  in  judgment,  his  honesty  of  speech,  his  perfect  and 
entire  fearlessness.  He  returns  repeatedly  to  this  claim 
of  truth-telling,  which  he  thought  was  his  duty  as  a  part 


CAMOENS  217 

of  his  fidelity  to  the  Muses;  and  when  he  invokes  their 
aid,  he  makes  this  his  main  plea:  - 

"Aid  me  you  only:  — long  indeed  sware  I 
No  grace  to  grant  where  good  doth  not  prevail, 
And  none  to  flatter,  whatso  their  degrees 
On  pain  of  losing  all  my  power  to  please." 

In  telling  the  story  of  Portugal,  past  and  present,  he 
had  much  occasion  to  use  this  high  ideal;  not  even  in 
those  days  did  he  hesitate  to  denounce  and  inveigh  within 
the  pale  of  the  Church  itself.  Morality,  in  the  high 
sense  of  character,  pervades  the  poem;  virtue,  in  the 
ancient  and  manly  meaning  of  the  word  —  the  old  epic 
"arms  and  the  man"  —  is  its  substance,  and  charm  is 
diffused  over  it  as  in  the  "vEneid."  This  charm  partly 
arises  from  that  oriental  coloring  —  the  lux  ex  Oriente 
—  natural  to  the  scene,  in  the  detail  of  which,  Burton 
says,  Camoens  rarely  trips,  being  more  accurate  than 
most  modern  authors,  and  that  experienced  traveler 
wonders  at  the  quality  of  the  brain  that  amassed  so  much 
information  from  sources  so  few  and  so  imperfect.  The 
charm,  however,  lies  also  in  the  contrast  between  the 
realism  of  the  matter  and  the  fantastic  power  of  Cam 
oens'  imagination,  which  is  one  of  his  most  powerful  and 
fascinating  traits  and  peculiarly  a  feature  of  his  orig 
inality.  The  Adamastor  episode  serves  as  an  example; 
but  a  nobler  one  is  the  ideal  figuring  of  the  rivers  Indus 
and  Ganges,  who  appear  like  Neptunian  forms  in  the 
dream  of  the  old  king  which  was  one  of  the  motives 
of  the  voyage.  The  variation  by  which  the  scenes  of 
pictured  history  —  a  tradition  of  the  epic  and  seen  by 
^Eneas,  you  remember,  at  Carthage  —  are  here  found 
spread  on  the  banners  of  the  festally  decorated  Portu- 


218  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

guese  ships  is  a  happy  play  of  the  poet's  fancy.  The 
isle  of  Venus,  that  receives  the  homeward-bound  fleet, 
is  perhaps  the  most  surprising,  as  it  is  certainly  the  love 
liest,  of  these  imaginative  fantasies.  But  it  is  not  by 
any  piecemeal  criticism  and  naming  of  passages  that 
the  quality  of  this  epic  can  be  conveyed. 

Yet  one  must  add  still  another  of  its  larger  elements, 
namely,  its  spaciousness.  I  mean  the  map  of  the  world, 
like  that  map  in  Marlowe's  "Tamburlaine,"  that  it  un 
folds.  Camoens  describes  the  European  quarter  early 
in  the  poem,  beginning  from  Russia  and  sweeping  south 
ward  and  west,  leaving  England  entirely  out  as  if  it 
were  Iceland  of  to-day,  and  finding,  of  course,  in  the  little 
state  of  Portugal  the  climax  and  summit  of  the  world. 
It  is  a  perspective  to  which  our  thoughts  are  unused, 
but  in  its  day  was  not  an  untrue  one;  and  for  us  to  have 
it  in  mind  —  to  emigrate  into  it,  as  it  were  —  is  a  pre 
requisite  to  the  appreciation  of  the  "Lusiads,"  for  such 
was  Camoens'  world.  He  also  describes  the  voyaging 
of  the  fleet  with  great  detail.  But  it  is  in  the  last  book 
of  the  poem  that  the  face  of  the  new  earth  is  shown, 
magically  in  the  mystic  globe  of  the  planetary  sphere,  to 
Da  Gama  by  the  Siren:  that  new  earth,  fresh  as  it  then 
arose  from  the  uncovered  waters — the  Asian  seas  and  con 
tinent  and  islands,  the  African  coasts  and  uplands,  and 
the  unknown  west  far  as  through  Magellan's  Straits;  it 
is  a  wide  reach,  a  finer  vision  than  Milton  gave  from  the 
specular  mount,  and  with  it  as  in  its  own  horizons  the 
epic  ends. 

The  "Lusiads"  is  the  only  truly  modern  epic,  but  one 
seems  to  breathe  in  it  the  early  air  of  the  "Odyssey" 
and  "Iliad"  more  than  in  any  intervening  poem;  like  the 
"Iliad"  and  the  "Odyssey/'  it  has  no  love  element  in 


CAMOENS  219 

its  plot,  but  the  old  heroic  life  —  man's  life  of  the  oar- 
blade  and  the  battle-field  —  rules  the  scene.  The  sense 
of  primitive  life,  however,  is  still  deeper-seated,  in  its 
neighborhood  to  nature,  where  the  sky  is  the  tent  of  the 
bivouac  and  the  roof  of  the  deck-watch,  and  man  is  a 
solitary  figure  in  the  landscape,  and  life  a  hand-to-hand 
affair.  Into  that  far  alien  field  of  earth  and  waters 
the  pride  of  Portugal  is  carried,  as  it  were,  on  the  ban 
ners  of  a  little  squadron  conquering  a  mighty  world. 
It  was  fitting  in  the  Peninsular  war  that  the  regiments 
of  Portugal  went  into  battle  with  lines  of  Camoens  in 
scribed  upon  their  flags.  Yet  it  is  a  narrow  view  that 
would  see  in  the  "Lusiads"  only  the  self-glorification  of 
a  little  state.  It  has  a  larger  significance.  The  blend 
ing  of  the  East  and  West  at  a  great  dawn  of  history  is 
here  rendered  in  a  noble  form  of  human  greatness,  cast 
in  the  lives  of  a  few  brave  men  equal  to  great  tasks. 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  traits  of  this  epic.  But  what  a 
fiery  soul  must  that  have  been  which  could  carry  such 
a  passion  of  poetry  through  the  years  of  exile  and  ever 
cherish  it  as  a  life  above  life  itself!  The  deep  melan 
choly  of  Camoens,  as  it  gathered  in  later  years,  is  plain; 
his  failure  in  love  —  the  hunger  of  the  heart  that  was 
never  to  be  appeased  with  any  earthly  touch  of  the  ideal 
—  was  but  the  sign  of  the  famine  that  fell  upon  him  in 
all  the  ways  of  success.  He  had  no  talent  for  success. 
He  was  filled  with  poet's  blood,  as  the  pure  grape  with 
wine.  He  was  wild  and  free,  amorous,  framed  for  en 
joyment,  Southern-hearted,  a  boon  comrade,  a  tender 
friend;  between  the  prison  and  the  camp  and  the  ship's 
deck  he  had  a  soldier's  gaiety,  was  fond  of  fine  apparel 
and  of  golden  suppers  —  the  adventurer's  changeful  for 
tune;  but  failure  was  all  he  found  in  the  East,  and  the 


220  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

profound  discouragement  of  his  lot  invaded  his  heart 
at  last.  He  reviewed  his  life  in  one  of  his  last  sonnets. 

"In  lowly  cell,  bereaved  of  liberty, 
Error's  meet  recompense,  long  time  I  spent; 
Then  o'er  the  world  disconsolate  I  went, 
Bearing  the  broken  chain  that  left  me  free; 
My  life  I  gave  unto  this  memory; 
No  lesser  sacrifice  would  Love  content; 
And  poverty  I  bore  and  banishment; 
So  it  was  ordered,  so  it  had  to  be. 
Content  with  little,  though  I  knew  indeed 
Content  unworthy,  yet,  aloof  from  strife, 
I  loved  to  mark  Man's  various  employ. 
But  my  disastrous  star,  whom  now  I  read, 
Blindness  of  death,  and  doubtfulness  of  life, 
Have  made  me  tremble  when  I  see  a  joy." 

The  passing  of  hope  out  of  his  life  was  the  history  of 
his  soul.  He  came  home  only  to  make  disaster  sure,  as 
the  event  proved.  Sick,  old  with  wounds,  the  almshouse 
gave  him  to  the  hospital,  and  the  hospital  to  the  grave, 
as  a  corpse  is  cast  from  wave  to  wave  till  it  sinks  into  a 
nameless  tomb.  It  seems  —  it  is  —  pitiful. 

"Woe  unto  all  that  hope!  to  all  that  trust!" 

It  is  the  epitaph  of  most  of  the  poets.  Yet  it  is  from 
the  consuming  flame  of  such  a  passion  and  power  of  life 
as  burnt  in  this  much-enduring  soul  that  poetic  genius 
gives  out  its  immortal  star. 


IV 

BYRON 

IT  is  an  error  to  think  of  Byron  as  an  English  poet; 
he  was  expatriated  not  only  in  his  person  but  in  his 
genius;  and  this  partly  accounts  for  the  fact  that  his 
reputation  so  soon  became,  and  still  remains,  Continental. 
He  was  not  a  poet  of  what  was  always,  for  him,  the  dis 
mal  island  of  his  birth.  He  was  rather  a  poet  of  the 
Mediterranean  world.  There  he  found  the  main  mate 
rial  of  his  works  —  the  motive,  the  stage,  the  incidents, 
and  the  inspiration  —  the  picturesque  and  romantic 
scene  of  his  imagination,  ranging  from  the  Straits  of 
Gibraltar  to  the  Golden  Horn.  He  stamped  his  mem 
ory  there  —  still  felt  —  from  Calpe  to  Stamboul.  Portu 
gal  and  Spain,  Albania  and  Greece  were  his  earliest 
topics  in  verse  after  his  boyish  preluding  was  done; 
Italy  was  the  main  theme  of  his  most  majestic  manhood 
poetry;  and  by  a  nearer  and  internal  tie  the  Italian 
literary  tradition  entered  into  his  genius  and  character 
ized  his  style.  England  need  not  have  troubled  to  refuse 
him  so  often  and  so  long  a  niche  in  the  Abbey;  for 
wherever  his  bones  may  lie  or  tablets  of  grateful  honor 
he  erected,  Greece  is  the  true  shrine  of  his  memory,  and 
will  always  be  so.  In  all  things  that  pertain  to  the  im 
mortal  part  of  him,  he  thus  belongs  to  the  Mediterranean; 
and  it  is  only  in  the  perspective  of  those  broken  coasts, 
in  the  purple  of  those  lonely  islands,  in  the  high  atmos- 

221 


I 

222  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

phere  of  those  snow-clad  and  thronging  peaks  that  his 
genius  is  seen  as  in  its  home, 

He  was  but  a  youth  and  in  the  first  flush  of  his  poetic 
blood,  when  the  Mediterranean  revelation  came  to  him, 
on  his  first  voyage.  He  entered  the  south  by  Lisbon. 
The  moment  was  a  true  awakening;  and  so  natural  that 
he  was  not  aware  the  poet  was  born  in  him;  and  later  he 
was  still  clinging  to  his  adolescent  and  apprentice  work 
—  such  as  the  "Hints  from  Horace"  —  for  the  hope  of 
reputation,  when  by  the  publication  of  these  first  Medi 
terranean  moods,  he  "awoke  and  found  himself  famous." 
But  his  fame  was  not  more  sudden  than  the  awakening 
had  been.  He  responded  at  once  to  that  disclosure  of 
the  Mediterranean  beauty,  which  is  a  romantic  marvel 
to  all  Northern  eyes; 

"Ah  me,  —  what  hand  can  pencil  guide  or  pen 
To  follow  half  on  which  the  eye  dilates?" 

and  one  feels  his  new  throb  of  life  in  the  mere  ampli 
tude  of  description  that  overflows  even  from  the  earliest 
stanzas:  — 

"The  horrid  crags  by  toppling  convent  crowned; 
The  cork-trees  hoar  that  clothe  the  shaggy  steep; 
The  mountain-moss  by  scorching  skies  imbrowned; 
The  sunken  glen  whose  sunless  shrubs  must  weep ; 
The  tender  azure  of  the  unruffled  deep, 
The  orange  fruits  that  gild  the  greenest  bough, 
The  torrents  that  from  cliff  to  valley  leap, 
The  vine  on  high,  the  willow  branch  below, 
Mixt  in  one  mighty  scene." 

Byron  had  the  poet's  temperament,  full  and  strong  — 
the  peril  in  his  blood,  the  wildness  of  impulse,  the  law 
less  will,  the  passion  of  life.  He  was  fresh  from  his  first 
angers  with  life,  and  had  gone  out  from  England  seeking 


BYRON  223 

an  escape  —  some  air  of  freer  breath,  some  horizon  to 
wander  in.  It  was  now  that  the  love  of  the  ocean  was 
confirmed  in  him;  for  in  his  experience  it  was  a  love  of 
Mediterranean  waves.  It  was  from  them,  as  he  sailed 
onward,  that  the  Corsairs'  song  was  caught:  — 

"O'er  the  glad  waters  of  the  dark  blue  sea, 
Our  thoughts  as  boundless,  and  our  souls  as  free, 
Far  as  the  breeze  can  bear,  the  billows  foam, 
Survey  our  empire,  and  behold  our  home!" 

It  was  a  great  adventure  for  this  youth  of  twenty  years 
—  such  a  voyage  into  the  Levant.  It  was  a  free  life  — 
such  freedom  as  he  had  never  known  —  and  it  was  ro 
mantic  in  its  scene  and  human  incident,  its  mingling  with 
more  primitive  men  of  strange  aspect  and  rough  hardi 
hood,  its  combined  naturalness  and  foreignness.  He 
never  forgot  its  pictures;  and  he  drew  one  for  all  in  that 
passage  of  "The  Dream"  which  describes  in  brief  these 
wanderings:  — 

"In  the  wilds 

Of  fiery  climes  he  made  himself  a  home, 
And  his  soul  drank   their  sunbeams;    he  was  girt 
With  strange  and  dusky  aspects;  he  was  not 
Himself  like  what  he  had  been ;  on  the  sea 
And  on  the  shore  he  was  a  wanderer; 
There  was  a  mass  of  many  images 
Crowded  like  waves  upon  me,  but  he  was 
A  part  of  all;  and  in  the  last  he  lay 
Reposing  from  the  noontide  sultriness, 
Couched  among  fallen  columns,  in  the  shade 
Of  ruined  walls  that  had  survived  the  names 
Of  those  who  reared  them;  by  his  sleeping  side 
Stood  camels  grazing,  and  some  goodly  steeds 
Were  fastened  near  a  fountain ;  and  a  man 
Clad  in  a  flowing  garb  did  watch  the  while 
While  many  of  his  tribe  slumbered  around; 


224  THE   INSPIRATION  OF   POETRY 

And  they  were  canopied  by  the  blue  sky, 
So  cloudless,  clear,  and  purely  beautiful, 
That  God  alone  was  to  be  seen  in  heaven." 

This  admirably  composed  oriental  scene  may  stand 
for  the  circumstance  and  atmosphere  of  this  voyage  as 
Byron  himself  remembered  it,  but  it  needs  to  be  sup 
plemented  by  the  more  stirring  scenes,  such  as  his  re 
ception  by  the  Suliotes  when  the  weather  forced  him  and 
his  crew  to  land  on  that  doubtful  coast:  — 

"Vain  fear!    The  Suliotes  stretched  the  welcome  hand, 
Led  them  o'er  rocks,  and  past  the  dangerous  swamp, 
And  piled  the  hearth,  and  wrung  their  garments  damp, 
And  filled  the  bowl,  and  trimmed  the  cheerful  lamp, 
And  spread  their  fare  —  though  homely,  all  they  had." 

Through  such  contact  with  nature,  with  the  pictur 
esque  and  primitive,  with  wild  and  savage  or  broad  and 
solitary  scenes,  Byron's  imagination  first  took  on  its  ro 
mantic  color;  and  the  free  life  he  led  in  the  open,  on  the 
sea  and  in  camp,  loosed  in  him  that  spirit  of  adventure 
which  in  his  verse  took  the  cast  of  desperate  love  and 
pirate  warfare — the  passion  and  brigandage  of  the  Levan 
tine  East.  They  were  almost  natural  elements  in  that 
environment;  and  in  idealizing  them  the  ardors  of  his  own 
young  temperament  found  an  imaginative  form.  Byron 
never  again  lived  so  fully  and  keenly,  either  imaginatively 
or  in  the  merely  physical  sense,  as  in  this  early  year  of  his 
Mediterranean  roving.  He  was  not  a  natural  wanderer,  a 
born  traveler,  like  Camoens.  He  never  heard  the  call  of 
the  wilderness  nor  obeyed  the  Wander-lust.  This  voyage 
was  only  such  a  one  as  any  young  Englishmen  might  take 
for  pleasure,  for  sport.  Nevertheless,  to  him,  being  a  poet, 
it  constituted  his  awakening,  and  stirred  and  freed  him, 


BYRON  225 

•* 

and  gave  his  genius  wing.  It  remained  his  deepest  poetic 
experience  and  the  happiest  memory  of  his  dying  past, 
with  its  "rosy  floods  of  twilight's  sky";  its  latest  recol 
lections,  after  many  years,  gave,  in  "Don  Juan,"  the 
loveliest  scenes  of  all  his  verse;  and  he  was  conscious 
of  the  debt:  — 

"Ave  Maria!  blessed  be  the  hour! 
The  time,  the  clime,  the  spot,  where  I  so  oft 
Have  felt  that  moment  in  its  fullest  power 
Sink  o'er  the  earth,  so  beautiful  and  soft, 
While  swung  the  deep  bell  in  the  distant  tower, 
Or  the  faint,  dying  day-hymn  stole  aloft, 
And  not  a  breath  crept  through  the  rosy  air, 
And  yet  the  forest  leaves  seemed  stirred  with  prayer." 

Byron  in  later  years  himself  once  wrote  to  Moore  in 
a  moment  of  discouragement  that  his  poetical  feelings 
began  and  ended  with  Eastern  countries,  and  that  having 
exhausted  the  subject,  he  could  make  nothing  of  any 
other.  Certain  it  is  that  this  year  of  adventurous  travel 
unlocked  the  sources  of  his  poetic  power. 

The  sudden  burst  of  his  genius  under  these  favoring 
circumstances  is,  as  you  know,  one  of  the  wonders  of 
literary  fame.  He  had  made  three  very  simple  prime  dis 
coveries.  The  first  was  of  the  romance  of  the  Orient; 
and  his  rendering  of  it  in  his  tales  is  still  its  chief  ex 
ample  in  our  literature.  Moore,  who  cultivated  the 
same  field,  was  in  this  as  in  other  things  only  Byron's 
satellite;  and  both  he  and  Southey  and  the  others  who 
added  the  Arabian  or  Persian  glamour  to  their  works  were 
mainly  indebted  to  dictionaries,  commentators,  and 
travelers,  whereas  Byron  took  it  from  its  native  soil. 
However  melodrama  may  enter  into  his  tales,  it  would 
be  an  error  not  to  recognize  their  realism,  not  only  in 


226  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

their  magnificent  nature-coloring,  but  also  in  their  man 
ners,  the  accoutrement  of  their  scenes,  the  play  of  their 
passions  —  and  especially  in  their  truth  to  the  sentiment 
of  the  land  — 

"The  land  where  the  cypress  and  myrtle 
Are  emblems  of  deeds  that  are  done  in  their  clime." 

Byron's  genius,  in  a  certain  sense,  was  low-flying;  he 
never  liked  to  be  far  from  matter  of  fact;  and  in  that 
"bodiless  creation"  that  the  more  ethereal,  spiritualizing 
poets  delight  in,  he  was  without  faculty.  He  was  little 
gifted  with  the  power  of  invention,  and  beneath  his  verse 
is  often  found  the  substratum  of  the  prose  of  others.  Even 
in  these  tales  there  is  paraphrasing  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe's 
novel,  "The  Bravo,"  for  example;  just  as  in  his  drama 
"Werner"  there  is  another  English  novel,  and  in  "The 
Island"  and  in  the  shipwreck  of  "Don  Juan"  there  are 
versions  of  old  voyages.  Byron  required  that  the  scene 
should  be  given  to  him,  a  basis  of  matter  of  fact  — 
realism.  It  was  his  good  fortune  that,  in  assimilating 
the  Orient,  realism  was  given  to  him  in  a  romantic  form 
and  on  that  superb  landscape  background,  of  which  the 
description  of  the  sunset  over  the  Morea,  seen  from 
Acrocorinth,  is  perhaps  the  most  familiar  example.  This 
coloring  belongs  to  the  characters  as  well,  who  are 
charged  with  passion  and  bravery;  and  the  whole  is  in 
keeping  with  that  tradition  of  violent  adventure  and 
sudden  turns  of  fortune,  which  is  the  historic  legend  of 
the  Mediterranean  in  the  Moslem  centuries.  The  tales, 
in  fact,  are  nearer  to  the  temper  of  Southern  literature, 
long  familiar  with  the  Saracen  and  the  Turk,  than  to 
our  own.  Their  realism  cannot  but  seem  exotic  in  Eng 
lish,  but  to  the  traveler  they  recall  the  country  of  their 


BYRON  227 

«• 

origin  with  the  vividness  of  memory.  For  Byron's  fame 
this  discovery  of  the  Levant  was  not  unlike  what  the  dis 
covery  of  the  Highlands  had  been  for  Scott  —  a  new 
world  where  fact  itself  was  romance. 

The  second  discovery  of  Byron  was  the  sentiment  of 
history  in  the  landscape.  It  began  in  his  classical  devo 
tion.  He  had  been  bred  in  school  and  college  on  Greek, 
and  had  that  enthusiasm  for  the  ancient  past  that  was 
one  of  the  great  and  fruitful  traits  of  the  old  education. 
He  had  translated  from  many  a  Greek  poet  with  school 
boy  fervor.  This  voyage  vivified  his  boyhood  studies. 
Nothing  is  more  genuine  hi  his  life  than  the  emotion 
with  which  the  actual  presence  of  the  sacred  places  of 
the  old  Greek  land  filled  him. 

"Oh,  thou  Parnassus!  whom  I  now  survey, 
Not  in  the  frenzy  of  a  dreamer's  eye, 
Not  in  the  fabled  landscape  of  a  lay, 
But  soaring  snow-clad  through  thy  native  sky, 
In  the  wild  pomp  of  mountain  majesty!   .    .    . 

Oft  have  I  dreamed  of  Thee!  whose  glorious  name 
Who  knows  not,  knows  not  man's  divinest  lore: 
And  now  I  view  thee,  'tis,  alas,  with  shame 
That  I  in  feeblest  accents  must  adore. 
When  I  recount  thy  worshipers  of  yore 
I  tremble,  and  can  only  bend  the  knee; 
Nor  raise  my  voice,  nor  vainly  dare  to  soar, 
But  gaze  beneath  thy  cloudy  canopy 
In  silent  joy  to  think  at  last  I  look  on  Thee!" 

It  was  on  the  next  day  after  composing  these  stanzas  that 
he  saw  on  Parnassus  the  flight  of  twelve  eagles  that  he 
took  as  a  happy  omen  of  his  poetic  fame.  The  mood 
of  these  lines,  the  mere  fact  of  this  incident,  testify  to 
the  sincerity  of  his  feeling.  It  warmed  his  description 


228  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

of  Greece,  and  gave  that  heroic  blast  to  the  lines  with 
which  again  and  again  he  strives  to  rouse  the  sleeping 
land.  It  was  a  feeling,  moreover,  destined  to  a  rich 
development,  and  at  last  made  him  the  characteristic 
type  of  the  brooder  over  the  buried  past  —  the  poet  of 
the  desolation  of  human  greatness.  Here,  again,  the 
solid  base  of  history,  the  natural  cling  of  his  mind  to 
realism,  to  matter  of  fact,  is  noticeable.  Under  this 
mood  of  history  poetry  becomes  meditative,  in  a  deep 
sense,  and  broods  upon  human  fate  in  its  final  issues; 
there  grows  up  that  feeling  which  Tennyson  called  "the 
passion  of  the  past,"  and  it  interprets  itself  and  finds 
expression  as  an  elegy  of  the  nations.  Byron  became 
the  great  poet  of  this  mood;  it  was  born  of  his  contact 
with  the  Mediterranean  shores,  and  it  took  its  touch 
of  nobility  especially  from  the  classic  stir  of  his  emo 
tions  in  Greece. 

The  third  discovery  in  this  year  of  travel  was  his 
practical  enthusiasm  for  political  liberty;  or,  if  it  be 
hardly  just  to  ascribe  to  one  group  of  circumstances  the 
revolutionary  force  that  played  so  great  a  part  in  his 
fame  and  was  so  deeply  rooted  in  his  nature,  yet  it  was 
the  actual  sight  of  the  servitude  of  Greece  that  pre 
cipitated  and  condensed  and  gave  practical  direction  to 
his  ardor.  Every  line  of  his  enthusiasm  for  the  Greece 
of  old  goes  coupled  with  a  rousing  cry  to  free  the 
land;  and  great  lines  they  are  in  which  he  strikes  this 
tocsin  of  liberty,  none  more  famous:  — 

"Hereditary  bondsmen,  know  ye  not 
Who  would  be  free  themselves  must  strike  the  blow!" 

Indignation  with  the  present  sloth  and  ignominy  is  in 
constant  struggle  with  his  memory  of  the  past  and 


BYRON  229 

his  feeling  of  virtue  in  the  soil  and  of  the  beauty  of 
the  scene:  — 

"Yet  are  thy  skies  as  blue,  thy  crags  as  wild; 
Sweet  are  thy  groves,  and  verdant  are  thy  fields, 
Thine  olive  ripe  as  when  Minerva  smiled, 
And  still  his  honeyed  wealth  Hymettus  yields; 
There  the  blithe  bee  his  fragrant  fortress  builds, 
The  free-born  wanderer  of  thy  mountain-air; 
Apollo  still  thy  long,  long  summer  gilds, 
Still  in  his  beam  Mendeli's  marbles  glare; 
Art,  Glory,  Freedom  fail,  but  Nature  still  is  fair. 

"Where'er  we  tread  'tis  haunted,  holy  ground; 
No  earth  of  thine  is  lost  in  vulgar  mould, 
But  one  vast  realm  of  wonder  spreads  around, 
And  all  the  Muse's  tales  seem  truly  told, 
Till  the  sense  aches  with  gazing  to  behold 
The  scenes  our  earliest  dreams  have  dwelt  upon; 
Each  hill  and  dale,  each  deepening  glen  and  wold 
Defies  the  power  which  crushed  thy  temples  gone: 
Age  shakes  Athena's  tower,  but  spares  gray  Marathon." 

The  very  name  of  the  old  battle-field  is  a  reproach. 
It  is  in  these  stanzas,  and  others  like  them,  that  there 
is  the  prophecy  of  Missolonghi. 

These  three  elements  of  the  verse,  the  romance  of 
the  Orient,  the  sentiment  of  the  past  in  the  place  of  its 
decay,  the  call  to  arms  against  the  Turk,  are  Mediter 
ranean  moods.  Every  traveler  still  recognizes  them  as 
dominant  in  his  own  experience  —  the  picturesqueness, 
the  desolation  of  old  time,  the  hope.  The  sense  of  deso 
lation  is  the  most  universal  and  profound,  and  in  five 
lines  Byron  gave  it  expression  that  is  true  not  of  one 
place  but  on  the  thousands  of  miles  of  those  lonely  and 
half -savage  coasts: 


230  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

"Look  on  this  spot  —  a  nation's  sepulchre! 
Abode  of  gods  whose  shrines  no  longer  burn. 
Even  gods  must  yield  —  religions  take  their  turn; 
'Twas  Jove's;  'tis  Mahomet's;  and  other  creeds 
Will  rise  with  other  years,  till  man  shall  learn 
Vainly  his  incense  soars,  his  victim  bleeds." 

Every  traveler  knows  the  mood,  and  there  at  least  is 
apt  to  find  it  just.  Outside  of  the  circle  of  these  three 
earlier  motives,  romance,  meditation  on  the  past,  en 
franchisement,  the  nobler  genius  of  Byron,  even  in  after 
years,  hardly  moved;  nor  did  it  rise  to  its  height  in 
other  than  Mediterranean  air,  except  on  the  field  of 
Waterloo  and  in  the  mountains  of  Switzerland. 

In  his  works  he  gave  the  first  motive,  romance,  its 
most  memorable  expression  in  the  loves  of  Juan  and 
Haidee  in  scenes  of  unrivalled  beauty  —  the  highest 
reach  of  the  romance  of  passion  in  English  verse;  the 
second  motive,  meditation,  he  developed  most  impres 
sively  and  eloquently  in  the  last  book  of  "Childe  Harold," 
making  Italy  his  theme,  in  an  elegy  of  genius  and  em 
pire  that  is  nowhere  equalled;  the  third,  freedom,  found 
its  climax  not  in  poetry  but  in  his  death  for  Greece. 

There  is  yet  another  element  that  sprang  and  strength 
ened  in  this  year  of  travel,  and  is  inextricably  blended 
with  the  other  three  —  his  initiation  into  the  love  of 
nature.  Byron  was  not,  as  I  have  already  said,  a  true 
rover;  he  was  not  only  not  a  Camoens  —  he  was  not  even 
a  Burton  or  a  Borrow.  He  never  again  repeated  this 
excursion,  but  was  content  to  live  within  the  pale  of 
civilization.  He  was  aristocratically  bred,  and  neces 
sarily  a  social  person;  in  the  fine  stanzas  on  solitude,  you 
remember,  he  found  true  solitude,  not  in  nature  but  in 
crowds,  that  is,  in  the  sense  of  isolation,  and  this  marks 


BYRON  231 

him  as  essentially  a  social  person;  but  once  in  his  life 
he  had  approached  the  mood  of  the  rover,  and  he  de 
scribes  the  precise  moment  when  he  - 

"felt  himself  at  length  alone, 
And  bade  to  Christian  tongues  a  long  adieu; 
Now  he  adventured  on  a  shore  unknown, 
Which  all  admire,  but  many  dread  to  view; 
His  breast  was  armed  'gainst  fate,  his  wants  were  few; 
Peril  he  sought  not,  but  ne'er  shrank  to  meet; 
The  scene  was  savage,  but  the  scene  was  new; 
This  made  the  ceaseless  toil  of  travel  sweet, 
Beat  back  keen  winter's  blast  and  welcomed  summer's  heat." 

It  is  the  picture  of  a  young  man  with  a  horse,  the  mood 
of  Kinglake,  for  example,  in  "Eothen."  But  in  this 
adventure  he  first  touched  hands  with  nature,  and  found 
by  experience  the  bracing  and  reposing  power  that  nature 
exercises  on  the  social  and  aristocratic  man  bred  in  cities 
—  he  found  the  relief  which  nature  affords  as  a  foil  to 
life.  He  escaped  from  the  conventional  and  entangling 
sphere  of  society,  and  reached  unbounded  freedom  in 
the  open.  The  scene  appealed  to  him  also  as  a  poet; 
the  extraordinary  beauty  of  it,  the  majestic  mountain 
ranges  round  the  long  purple  gulfs,  the  mere  clarity  of 
the  heavens  were  a  revelation  to  his  senses,  and  edu 
cated  them,  and  through  them  entered  into  his  spirit. 
There  was  also  an  idiosyncrasy  in  his  temperament, 
something  grandiose  in  the  man's  soul  which  the  greater 
scenes  of  nature  developed  and  defined  more  consciously 
and  gave  a  run  of  feeling;  such  scenes  roused  the  physi 
cal  electricity  of  his  body,  and  made  him  sympathetic 
with  the  Alpine  storm,  the  glacier  peak,  and  the  ocean 
gale.  This  deep  power  of  nature  so  to  stir  him,  and  to 
exhaust  itself  in  mere  feeling,  first  fell  on  him  with  full 


232  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

seizure  in  the  solitudes  of  the  Greek  coasts.  It  grew 
with  his  growth,  but  it  was  then  dissociated  from  this 
early  adventure  and  experience  of  the  wild  and  the 
foreign.  It  became  a  power  of  pure  sentiment.  "To 
me/'  he  says,  "high  mountains  are  a  feeling."  It  was  a 
more  physical  feeling  than  is  found  in  his  contempora 
ries;  he  did  not  idealize  and  transform  and  mythologize 
nature,  like  Shelley,  or  become  pantheistic  or  religious 
in  his  thought  of  it  or  awe  of  it,  like  Wordsworth;  among 
nature-poets  —  and  he  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  nature- 
poets —  he  remains  in  the  dimly  conscious  and  uninter- 
preted  mood  of  men  who  in  the  presence  of  nature  only 
see  and  feel.  It  was  true  of  him  in  this  early  time,  — 

"Where  rose  the  mountains,  there  to  him  were  friends; 
Where  rolled  the  ocean,  thereon  was  his  home; 
Where  a  blue  sky,  and  glowing  clime,  extends, 
He  had  the  passion  and  the  power  to  roam; 
The  desert,  forest,  cavern,  breaker's  foam, 
Were  unto  him  companionship ;  they  spake 
A  mutual  language." 

But  after  this  first  youthful  year  "the  passion  and  the 
power  to  roam"  was  a  figment  of  his  ideal  self,  though 
he  retained  the  secret  of  that  "mutual  language,"  and 
wherever  he  found  himself  in  his  later  little  journeys 
from  Geneva  to  Venice,  from  Ravenna  to  Pisa,  he  used 
this  key. 

It  is  apparent  from  what  has  been  already  brought 
forward  that  Byron  unfolded  his  genius  characteristic 
ally  through  phases  of  sentiment,  romantically  colored, 
*  of  which  the  various  elements  show  themselves  clearly 
in  the  first-fruits  of  his  Mediterranean  experience  — 
the  fourfold  sentiment  for  the  Levant,  for  the  elegy  of 


BYRON  233 

history,  for  the  hopes  of  the  Greeks,  for  the  more  majes 
tic  phenomena  and  the  elemental  force  of  nature.  As 
he  matured,  he  developed  another  sentiment,  which  was 
destined  to  swallow  up  all  these,  and,  as  it  were,  to  fatten 
upon  them,  and  to  become  the  memory  of  him  that  most 
deeply  stamps  his  personality  in. the  minds  of  men.  I 
can  only  call  it  the  sentiment  of  self.  He  was  an  egotist, 
as  most  of  the  poets  have  been;  egotism  is  the  secret 
of  their  strength  as  it  is  of  the  strength  of  all  masters  of 
the  world,  except,  indeed,  the  few  spiritually  minded  who 
dare  to  throw  their  lives  away.  He  built  up,  as  years 
went  on,  an  ideal  self;  the  analysis  of  its  formation  would 
be  an  interesting  psychological  study,  for  it  was  framed 
from  many  sources.  It  is  but  slightly  to  be  discerned 
in  the  early  cantos  of  "Childe  Harold."  It  hardly  be 
came  fixed  in  his  own  mind  until  after  the  troubles  which 
led  to  his  second  and  final  flight  from  England  into  that 
self-exile  which  lasted  till  his  death.  He  was  one  of 
those  men  who  have  something  theatrical  in  their  nature; 
he  loved  the  center  of  the  stage;  he  liked  effect.  The 
circumstances  of  his  life  made  it  easy  for  him  to  hold 
attention;  and  also  to  adopt  into  his  character  an  ele 
ment  of  mystery,  of  which  he  knew  the  stage  value; 
and  he  favored  by  his  air  and  conduct  the  public  disposi 
tion  to  create  in  the  background  of  his  career  something 
melodramatic;  he  let  it  be  believed  that  in  his  own  Medi 
terranean  experience  there  had  been  the  color  of  "The 
Corsair"  and  of  "Lara,"  and  that  in  the  type  of  his  heroes 
there  was  something  of  himself  in  masquerade.  It  is 
in  the  third  canto  of  "Childe  Harold"  that  he  unmasked 
frankly  to  the  public  the  ideal  self  as  it  had  come  to 
be  at  the  moment  of  his  departure  from  England  — 
the  ideal  of  the  blighted  life:  — 


234  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

"The  very  knowedge  that  he  lived  in  vain, 
That  all  was  over  on  this  side  the  tomb." 

This  is  the  well-known  refrain  that  through  a  hundred 
variations  makes  "Childe  Harold"  not  only  an  elegy  of 
nations  but  a  personal  lament  of  the  individual  life.  It 
does  not  appear  to  me  that  the  burden  of  "Childe  Harold" 
is  disillusion;  it  is,  on  the  contrary,  disappointment; 

"We  wither  from  our  youth,  we  gasp  away: 
Sick  —  sick  —  unfound  the  boon,  unslaked  the 
thirst  —  " 

in  lines  like  these  the  mood  is  of  the  futility  of  life, 
which  is  as  strongly  felt  in  a  thwarted  ambition  as  in  a 
vanished  ideal.  Byron's  melancholy  is  not  that  of  the 
betrayed  idealist,  it  seems  to  me,  but  rather  of  the 
thwarted  realist;  life  had  denied  to  him  his  will. 

Power  has  always  been  the  quality  most  immediately 
recognized  in  Byron  —  "the  greatest  force  that  has  ap 
peared  in  our  literature,"  says  Arnold,  you  remember, 
"since  Shakespeare";  and  every  reader  feels  "the  fiery 
fount"  in  him,  that  Dionysaic  daemonic  force,  which  is 
the  core  of  poetic  energy.  He  had  the  unquenchable 
thirst  for  life  that  belongs  to  the  poets;  desires  and  ambi 
tions  filled  him;  but  in  the  first  maturity  of  manhood,  just 
before  he  was  thirty,  there  fell  on  him  the  certainty  that 
he  was  balked,  that  his  passion  and  power  of  life  was  an 
irony  of  fate,  and  for  him  only  the  curse  of  being.  It 
is  not  necessary  to  inquire  into  the  causes  of  this;  the 
fact  was  so;  and  against  this  fact  he  revolted  with  a  reac 
tion  of  tremendous  energy.  It  so  happened  that  the 
country  of  his  birth,  England,  served  her  poet  mainly  as 
a  foil  that  brought  out  the  most  violent  aspects  of  this 
revolt.  England,  in  his  mind,  was  the  incarnation  of 


BYRON  235 

•* 

that  which  had  defrauded  him.  In  turn  he  struck  back. 
In  his  religious  dramas  he  attacked  orthodoxy,  and  in 
"Don  Juan"  he  attacked  morality,  as  the  English  under 
stood  those  terms;  he  shocked  England,  and  still  shocks 
her,  by  the  blasphemy  and  licentiousness,  as  it  is  there 
described,  of  his  verse.  It  was  his  literary  revenge  on 
his  country. 

He  still  strove  for  the  poetic  laurel;  he  had  literary 
ambition  to  a  strong  degree,  and  his  historical  dramas 
are  rooted  in  this  ambition,  the  fruits  of  it,  and  are  little 
successful,  for  the  soil  of  mere  ambition  is  not  deep 
enough  for  poetry.  His  productiveneess  was  great  and 
rapid;  he  showed  his  energy  in  this  trait,  and  created,  as 
it  were,  by  main  force  a  drama  in  a  month,  a  poem  in  a 
day.  In  nearly  all  the  same  strain  is  constant,  and  the 
despair  or  contempt  of  life  is  the  motive  that  yields  alike 
the  most  sincere  and  the  most  cynical  verse,  and  makes 
the  ground  tone  of  the  whole.  It  is,  however,  impos 
sible  not  to  feel  that  Byron's  suffering  was  real,  that 
in  him  something  noble  was  frustrated,  and  that  the  ideal 
self,  on  which  he  concentrated  all  his  power  of  senti 
ment  with  an  extraordinary  faculty  of  self-pity  and  of 
self-exaltation,  had  genuine  elements.  In  the  last  canto 
of  "Childe  Harold"  he  blends  his  own  melancholy  — 
that  of  the  individual  life  —  with  the  melancholy  of  the 
fate  of  human  grandeur  in  a  flow  of  noble  eloquence  and 
personal  passion,  gathering  breadth  and  majesty  under 
the  shadow  of  Rome,  until  he  pours  it  like  a  mighty  river 
into  the  sea  in  that  last  magnificent  apostrophe  on  the 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean.  "Childe  Harold,"  which 
gave  forth  the  first  fountains  of  his  genius,  taken  in  its 
whole  course,  is  its  life-stream;  it  is  his  most  noble  work, 
and  contains  all  his  personal  ascendency  in  the  figure  of 


236  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

Harold,  and  the  most  powerful  elements  of  his  genius 
in  its  brooding  over  the  life  of  man  and  of  mankind  — 
the  fate  of  passion  in  life  and  of  glory  in  time.  Its  only 
rival  in  his  fame  is  "Manfred,"  where  he  gave  dramatic 
form  to  this  same  ideal  self,  and  condensed  its  story  in 
a  brief  and  tragic  play.  This  form  is  more  somber  and 
composed,  and  seems  more  personal,  more  actual  in  its 
ideal  self-portraiture;  but  this  is  due  to  its  simpler  defi 
nition  and  intense  concentration.  What  "Childe  Har 
old"  is  diffusely  and  elegiacally,  "Manfred"  is  intensely 
and  dramatically  —  the  ideal  summary  of  Byron. 

It  was  this  ideal  summary  that  in  the  next  age  became 
Byronism,  and  filled  the  European  youth  with  its  moods; 
nor  should  there  be  anything  strange  in  this;  for  Byron- 
ism,  despite  all  seeming,  is  the  mood  of  strength.  It 
contains  the  two  halves  of  youthful  life  at  the  full  —  its 
intense  ardors  and  its  profound  discouragements.  The 
melancholy  of  Byron  is  the  shadow  cast  by  his  power; 
he  lamented  life  because  he  loved  it  so  much.  It  is 
true  that  for  men  of  English  blood,  what  seems  melo 
dramatic  and  sentimental  and  the  weakness  of  personal 
complaint  interferes  with  the  appreciation  of  his  verse; 
but,  as  I  said  at  the  beginning,  Byron  is  not  character 
istically  an  English  poet,  but  a  poet  of  the  Southern 
lands,  of  the  Mediterranean,  where  he  found  his  inspira 
tion  and  his  themes,  and  in  whose  neighborhood  he  passed 
his  life  during  the  composition  of  his  works;  and  to 
men  of  Romance  blood,  and  also  to  the  German  and 
the  Slav,  melodrama  and  sentiment  and  the  psychology 
of  passion  are  quite  a  different  thing  from  what  they  are 
in  the  British  climate  and  the  Anglo-Saxon  temperament. 
The  surprise  and  novelty  of  these  things  to  Englishmen 
was  indeed  one  of  the  causes  of  their  immediate  success 


BYRON  237 

•* 

in  London  when  they  were  still  fresh.  Byron's  render 
ing  of  the  history  and  the  scenes  of  passion  is  the  sign 
royal  of  his  poetic  genius.  He  was,  in  this  as  in  all 
other  ways,  a  realist,  and  he  presented  the  theme  with  a 
vividness  of  emotion,  a  rush  of  eloquence,  and  a  dramatic 
tic  sense  of  incident  and  of  catastrophe,  that  make  them 
still  the  best  tales  in  poetry  in  our  literature,  as  they 
originally  drove  Scott,  his  only  rival  in  the  game,  out  of 
the  field.  It  was  natural  that  with  the  maturing  of  years, 
and  amid  his  own  private  unhappiness,  he  should  show 
the  darker  side  of  the  history  of  passion;  and  no  poet 
has  so  painted  its  pains  and  its  despairs,  as  in  the  Rous 
seau  stanzas  and  many  others;  it  is  natural,  too,  that 
such  an  expression,  so  violent,  so  warm,  so  personal, 
so  self-revealing,  should  be  more  sympathetically  re 
ceived  by  the  nations  of  Southern  temperament,  who  are 
to  the  manner  born,  and  in  whose  lives  passion  plays  like 
blood,  and  to  whose  own  experience  these  lines  give  form 
and  meaning.  Passion,  the  poet's  gift,  was  Byron's  en 
dowment  and  experience  both,  and  in  his  latest  work  he 
still  drew  its  scenes  with  truth  and  charm  beyond  all 
others,  with  delight  in  them,  even  when  the  sequel  was 
cynicism.  It  is  by  the  variety  and  the  fire  of  his  ren 
derings  of  real  scenes  of  passion,  and  by  the  psycho 
logical  analysis  of  it  as  an  element  in  the  wretchedness 
and  futility  of  life,  that  he  entered  most  intimately  into 
the  hearts  of  all  those  youths  whom  he  so  stirred  upon 
the  Continent.  It  was  to  them  a  part  of  his  strength. 
It  was  as  a  type  of  strength  and  not  of  weakness  that 
they  saw  him.  He  was  to  them  a  Promethean  figure, 
Titanic  in  energy,  suffering  the  woes  of  life,  and  warring 
on  the  gods  of  the  old  regime,  the  incarnation  of  splendid 
and  passionate  revolt  against  life  itself.  His  poetry  had 


238  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

with  them  the  double  fortune  that  it  had  in  himself;  it 
blended  with  their  private  lives  on  the  pathetic  side  and 
with  their  public  hopes  in  their  revolutionary  energy. 
For,  if  he  was  the  victim  of  passion,  he  was  also  the 
apostle  of  liberty;  no  voice  rang  like  his  through  Europe 
in  the  cause  of  freedom,  and  in  his  death  he  was  its 
martyr. 

If  there  is  one  thing  that  is  borne  in  on  the  sympathetic 
reader  of  his  life,  it  is  that  the  man  lacked  a  career  — 
some  channel  for  the  passion  and  power  of  life  in  him  to 
pour  through,  some  cause  to  serve,  some  deed  to  do. 
In  personality  he  reminds  one  of  that  Renaissance  type, 
masterful,  not  subject  to  any  law,  reckless;  and,  in  his 
later  years,  he  seems  near  to  the  decadence,  like  an 
Italian  nobleman  of  the  degeneracy,  disoccupied  with 
life  and  more  selfishly  cynical  with  each  revolving  year. 
It  was  from  this  state  that  he  roused  himself  to  make 
that  last  effort  in  the  cause  of  Greece  which  restored  to 
him  the  robe  of  honor  that  was  slipping  from  his  shoul 
ders.  It  was  from  one  point  of  view  a  kind  of  suicide 
of  genius  —  the  act  of  a  man  who  finds  nothing  left  but 
to  die  with  honor.  In  seeking  it,  nevertheless,  he  recalls 
to  us  the  generous  qualities  that  were  in  his  youth,  of 
which  the  type  is  the  Boy  in  the  antique  oratory.  There 
was  a  spirit  of  nobility  in  the  man's  soul  in  early  years, 
as  his  school  friendships  show;  and  though  dimmed,  it 
was  never  lost.  He  was  good  metal.  He  had  power;  he 
had  passion;  and  the  charter  of  greatness  was  his.  He 
had  come  to  wreck,  in  his  own  eyes;  and  to  ours  he  seems 
like  a  noble  vessel  chafing  to  pieces  on  the  sluggish  reef 
of  time.  He  would  end  it.  He  remembered  his  youth  — 
when  he  had  sat  on  Sunium's  marble  steep  and  dreamed 
that  Greece  might  yet  be  free.  He  went  back  to  those 


BYRON  239 

Adriatic  shores,  to  the  Leucadian  seas,  where  he  had 
coasted  in  the  dawn  of  his  fame,  to  the  height  of  snowy 
Parnassus  over  the  long  purple  gulf  that  had  so  stirred 
him,  and  there  in  its  shadow,  in  his  last  stanza,  he  said 
adieu  to  life:  — 

"Seek  out  —  less  often  sought  than  found  — 
A  soldier's  grave,  for  thee  the  best; 
Then  look  around,  and  choose  thy  ground, 
And  take  thy  rest." 


V 
GRAY 

I  HAVE  thought  it  appropriate  to  select  one  example 
of  the  poetic  temperament,  not  from  the  "bards  sub 
lime,"  but  from  those  more  quiet  sons  of  the  Muse  whom 
we  call  minor  poets;  for,  though  their  works  be  in  low 
relief,  yet,  if  the  theory  is  sound,  they  should  show  in 
their  degree  the  traits  of  the  grand  style,  as  we  find 
the  same  supreme  Greek  art  even  on  broken  vases  and 
utensils  of  daily  life.  Certainly  no  one  would  dream 
of  describing  Gray  as  "mad"  ;  the  word  "passion"  is 
grotesquely  inapplicable  to  him;  and  even  such  a  phrase 
as  "the  power  of  life"  seems  dubiously  to  be  used  of  his 
lethargic  nature.  He  was  a  mild  and  gentle  scholar, 
who  lived  in  the  lazy  air  of  a  university,  slow  in  all 
his  physique,  intellectually  self-indulgent,  procrastinat 
ing,  an  invalid  with  invalid  habits  of  conduct,  a  dilettante, 
a  letter-writer.  His  entire  routine  of  life  afflicts  us  with 
a  sense  of  dulness  and  heaviness,  an  English  atmosphere 
of  dampness  and  ennui,  which  inclines  us  at  once  to 
commiseration.  He  wrote  very  little  —  so  marvelously 
little  that  he  is,  in  literary  history,  the  typical  instance 
of  unproductiveness,  of  sterility.  The  Dionysiac  fire 
was  very  somnolent,  to  say  the  least,  in  his  case.  Vesu 
vius,  however,  is  not  always  in  violent  eruption,  and 
those  who  look  on  it  for  the  most  part  see  the  mighty 
mountain  with  only  a  thin  wisp  of  smoke  lazily  drifting 

241 


242  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

upon  the  pale,  high  air;  sometimes  there  is  not  even 
that. 

In  comparison  with  such  poets  as  we  have  considered, 
Gray's  verse  is  such  a  wisp  of  smoke.  Yet  it  is  fair  to 
remember  —  what  is  oftenest  forgotten  —  that  great 
literature  is  not  a  constant  product  of  this  planet,  that 
many  nations  have  none  of  it  to  speak  of,  and  that  in 
favored  nations  it  is  the  rarest  of  all  their  products. 
On  the  whole,  poetic  energy,  if  it  has  the  violence  and 
splendor  of  volcanic  fire,  has  also  its  general  repose- 
fulness.  In  the  intervals  of  activity  men  are  content 
with  the  phenomena  which  show  the  continued,  though 
torpid,  existence  of  the  great  life-principle;  and  the 
wisp  of  smoke  is,  after  all,  curling  placidly  up  from  the 
old  forges  within.  It  behooves  us,  especially,  to  be 
modest,  for  our  magnificent  America  has  never  yet  pro 
duced  a  poet  even  of  the  rank  of  Gray.  Moreover,  there 
is  a  singular  circumstance  in  Gray's  case:  slight  as  his 
product  was,  it  has  had  an  immense  fame  and  vogue 
among  men.  His  work  resembles  one  of  those  single 
anonymous  poems  of  the  world  which  have  achieved 
fame  all  by  themselves,  unaided  and  alone.  Little  poetry 
has  been  so  widely  read,  so  familiarized  in  households, 
as  the  "Elegy."  It  has  also  been  highly  appreciated. 
No  poem  has  had  a  finer  compliment  paid  it  than  was 
contained  in  the  old  story  of  Wolfe's  reciting  it  to  his 
officers  in  the  darkness  of  the  river  as  he  drifted  down  to 
his  heroic  death,  and  declaring  that  to  write  it  was  more 
glorious  than  a  victory.  The  "Elegy,"  it  is  true,  is 
somewhat  exceptional;  but  the  best  of  Gray's  work  has 
had  equal  immortality,  and  still  goes  wherever  the  Eng 
lish  language  makes  its  way.  No  one  reads  Marlowe 
now  except  students  in  libraries  and  poets  by  profession; 


GRAY  243 

and  the  voice  of  Byron  grows  rare  and  distant  —  his 
vogue  evaporates;  but  Gray's  verse  still  has  the  shining 
of  the  adamant  of  time  upon  its  lines,  and  seems  as 
untouched  with  two  centuries  as  Mimnermus  and  Theog- 
nis  with  twenty.  Gray  is  among  the  poets  who  die  only 
with  the  language  that  they  breathed. 

Gray  did  not  greatly  strive  for  fame.  Perhaps  there 
was  some  obstruction  in  his  nature  or  his  circumstances; 
perhaps  he  did  not  greatly  care.  There  was,  at  least, 
no  struggle  in  him,  no  restless  necessity  for  expression, 
no  stress  of  thought  or  of  feeling.  He  was,  as  a  mortal, 
very  ordinary;  and  as  a  man  of  culture,  very  humane. 
He  led  the  stillest  of  bachelor  lives  in  college  chambers. 
If  he  had  deliberately  excluded  emotion  from  his  life, 
he  could  hardly  have  better  succeeded.  Of  course  he 
was  often  bored,  and  often  lazy  —  that  is,  not  unem 
ployed,  but  with  a  scholar's  laziness.  He  took  but  little 
interest  in  contemporary  politics  or  war,  and  found 
rather  amusement  than  any  cause  for  excitement  in  the 
spectacle  of  what  men  do.  The  passage  in  which  he 
describes  Pitt's  speech,  on  proposing  a  monument  for 
Wolfe,  is  typical  and  a  melancholy  comment  on  the 
admiration  of  Wolfe  for  the  writer.  "Pitt's  second 
speech,"  he  says,  "was  a  studied  and  puerile  declamation 
on  funeral  honors.  In  the  course  of  it  he  wiped  his 
eyes  with  one  handkerchief,  and  Beckford,  who  seconded 
him,  cried,  too,  and  wiped  with  two  handkerchiefs  at 
once,  which  was  very  moving."  That  is  typical  of  the 
way  in  which  he  looked  on  human  affairs.  They  were 
no  great  matter  —  Gray  was  a  gentleman.  He  moved 
freely  in  the  world  of  high  life,  and  liked  to  talk  of  men 
of  rank  over  the  sweet  wine  he  drank  after  his  mutton. 
The  passions  of  nations,  the  swing  of  ideas,  the  fortunes 


244  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

of  battle,  were  no  more  to  him  than  club  topics  would 
be  to-day,  news  and  conversation,  but  not  exciting.  He 
read  Rousseau,  he  says,  but  "heavily,  heavily"  ;  that  is, 
he  was  bored.  He  had  his  well-bred  circle  of  friends, 
very  polite,  and  his  well-bred  private  tastes,  very  culti 
vated;  but  he  was  unmoved,  habitually  otiose,  lethargic, 
oppressed  with  the  dulness  of  things  very  often,  yet  not, 
I  think,  unhappy;  indeed,  a  certain  intellectual  gaiety, 
even  in  describing  his  own  dulness,  is  a  part  of  the  charm 
of  his  private  correspondence.  There  was  much  non 
chalant  good  breeding  in  him,  especially  as  he  grew  up 
and  came  into  the  routine  of  manhood;  he  was  a  man 
of  the  world,  not  in  the  sense  of  being  merely  a  man 
of  society,  but  in  the  sense  of  being  disengaged,  dis 
interested,  the  impartial  spectator  with  a  light  touch, 
a  just  judgment,  and  a  tone  of  elegance. 

In  his  youth  he  appears  more  amiable,  though  there 
was  in  him  then  all  the  promise  of  the  type  he  became. 
He  made,  you  remember,  with  three  other  friends  at 
college  a  league  of  friendship  known  as  the  quadruple 
alliance.  Walpole  was  one  member  of  the  set;  and  his 
friendship  with  Walpole  characterizes  the  eighteenth- 
century  tone  of  the  social  half  of  his  nature.  A  second 
member  was  West,  who  died  young  and  with  griefs  of 
the  mind  as  well  as  with  ills  of  the  body,  and  who  left 
a  charming  memory  of  himself,  both  in  his  verses  and  in 
his  affection  for  Gray,  with  whom  he  is  associated  as 
the  true  youthful  comrade;  and  this  friendship  with 
West,  in  which  there  is  an  unusual  high-bred  demeanor 
considering  the  youth  of  the  two,  characterizes  the  other 
half  of  Gray's  nature,  the  more  kindly  and  natural  half, 
not  more  intimate,  but  intimate  with  more  equality;  with 
Walpole  one  thinks  of  Gray's  social  history,  with  West 
one  thinks  of  his  personal  charm. 


GRAY  245 

This  private  side  of  character  he  exhibited,  it  would 
seem,  in  his  college  residence  during  his  mature  life  to 
younger  men  who  were  students  there.  The  tribute  that 
one  of  these  young  men  paid  to  him,  shortly  after  his 
death,  breathes  the  pure  spirit  of  such  a  happy  relation. 
The  passage  is  familiar,  but  can  hardly  be  spared.  The 
young  man  is  writing  to  his  mother. 

"You  know  that  I  considered  Mr.  Gray  as  a  second 
parent,  that  I  thought  only  of  him,  built  all  my  happiness 
on  him,  talked  of  him  forever,  wished  him  with  me  when 
ever  I  partook  of  any  pleasure,  and  flew  to  him  for  refuge 
whenever  I  felt  any  uneasiness.  To  whom  now  shall  I 
talk  of  all  I  have  seen  here?  Who  will  teach  me  to 
read,  to  think,  to  feel?  I  protest  to  you  that  whatever 
I  did  or  thought  had  a  reference  to  him.  If  I  met 
with  any  chagrins,  I  comforted  myself  that  I  had  a  treas 
ure  at  home;  if  all  the  world  had  despised  and  hated 
me,  I  should  have  thought  myself  perfectly  recompensed 
in  his  friendship.  There  remains  only  one  loss  more;  if 
I  lose  you,  I  am  left  alone  in  the  world.  At  present  I 
feel  that  I  have  lost  half  myself." 

Another  instance  of  the  cordiality  with  which  he  wel 
comed  youth,  at  least  when  it  appealed  to  him  at  all,  is 
his  remark  on  the  Swiss  Bonstettin,  who  so  uselessly  tried 
to  make  Gray  talk  of  his  own  poetry  and  personal  affairs. 
"I  never  saw  such  a  boy,"  says  Gray;  "our  breed  is  not 
made  on  this  model." 

A  life,  so  untouched  with  worldly  unrest,  so  withdrawn 
in  happy  privacies  of  companionship  and  of  gentle  tastes, 
so  breathing  the  air  of  delightful  studies,  lying  wrapt  and 
somber  in  our  minds  between  the  churchyard  repose  and 
the  collegiate  hush,  is  almost  monastic  in  its  effect. 


246  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

Yet  the  impression  needs  to  be  relieved  by  other  traits. 
Gray,  for  example,  was  a  traveler,  and  at  times  he  es 
caped  from  this  seclusion  of  himself,  for  if  the  mind 
does  not  change  with  travel,  it  at  least  moves  under  differ 
ent  lights.  He  made  the  journey  through  France,  when 
he  was  young,  with  Walpole,  and  went  into  Italy  as  far 
as  Naples.  Whether  he  derived  it  from  this  excursion 
or  not,  he  had  a  liking  for  travel  —  I  dare  not  call  it  a 
passion  —  but  it  was  perhaps  such  an  enthusiasm  as 
his  veins  were  capable  of.  It  is  said  that  he  had  mapped 
out  every  picturesque  journey  in  England,  and  in  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  picturesque  journeys 
in  England  for  an  elegant  gentleman  like  Mr.  Gray  were 
really  proofs  of  enterprise.  He  was  early  hardened  to 
travel  on  the  road  and  had  knowledge  of  inns,  and  in 
these  journeys  was  his  slight  taste  of  adventure  —  all 
he  had.  Just  before  he  died  he  seemed  to  feel  that  his 
only  hope  lay  in  travel.  The  fact  of  his  saying  so  shows 
how  much  travel  had  meant  to  him  in  his  life.  The 
notes  he  made  of  his  Italian  travel,  for  example,  exhibit 
the  quality  of  his  mind  with  great  clearness.  He  was 
mentally  vastly  curious;  his  intellectual  curiosity  was 
unbounded,  and  shows  primarily  in  him  the  mind  of  the 
scholar;  not  the  mind  of  the  thinker  at  all  —  for  he 
seldom  generalizes  —  but  that  of  the  scholar,  the  col 
lector  of  knowledge;  for  knowledge  may  be  collected  like 
snuff-boxes  or  fossils,  and  the  scholar's  learning  is  not 
infrequently  a  sort  of  museum.  Such  a  museum  was 
Gray's  mind.  On  his  Italian  journey  one  sees  him  in 
the  act  of  collecting  it  with  youthful  enthusiasm.  He 
catalogues  the  pictures  and  marbles,  and  describes  and 
comments  briefly  upon  them;  he  maps  the  cities,  the 
squares  and  buildings,  the  river  and  the  road,  and  the 


GRAY  247 

ruins  beside  the  way.  In  Naples,  especially,  one  is 
struck  by  the  thoroughness  with  which  he  explored  the 
ancient  district  to  the  west  of  the  city,  the  diversity  of 
interests  he  found  there,  the  fulness,  minuteness,  and 
variety  of  his  account,  compressed  though  it  is,  and  above 
all  by  the  interest  he  took  in  it.  His  open  and  cordial 
spirit  toward  foreign  things  —  not  a  frequent  trait  in 
first  travels  —  is  extraordinary.  He  was  plainly  a  care 
ful  traveler,  laborious  and  fruitful  in  observation,  storing 
up  multitudes  of  facts.  This,  which  is  so  plainly  seen 
in  the  Italian  notes,  is  characteristic  of  his  mind  in  all 
its  accumulations. 

He  was  a  connoisseur  of  the  fine  arts,  not  merely  in 
the  major  arts,  painting,  sculpture,  and  architecture,  but 
in  prints,  antiquities,  gardening.  He  applied  himself 
to  natural  sciences  in  several  fields,  like  Goethe,  and 
made  the  best  account  of  English  insects  up  to  that  time. 
He  was  profound,  for  his  age,  in  history,  and  commanded 
foreign  history  in  its  own  languages.  He  was  as  fond 
of  reading  travels  as  of  traveling,  and  interested  himself 
in  geography;  he  investigated  heraldry.  He  was  expert 
in  the  literature  of  the  art  of  cooking.  He  understood 
music.  He  was  an  excellent  scholar  in  Greek,  then  a 
rare  accomplishment,  and  very  thorough  in  his  pursuit 
of  it,  where  he  had  some  of  the  qualities  of  a  pioneer. 
Clearly,  he  had  a  wonderfully  acquisitive  mind  for  facts, 
and  also  a  singular  capacity  for  the  development  of  esthe 
tic  tastes  of  diverse  kinds.  He  was  a  man  of  compre 
hensive  faculty  and  consequently  of  erudition. 

His  information,  however,  retained  the  general  charac 
ter  of  the  note-book  and  the  handbook;  it  was  miscel 
laneous,  but  exact  and  detailed.  For  such  collections  as 
have  been  described  a  great  deal  of  industry  was  re- 


248  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

quired,  though  it  was  an  industry  that  might  seem  to 
Gray  often  a  waste  of  time  and  a  kind  of  laziness;  in 
details  one  often  seems  bewilderingly  idle,  at  the  best, 
and  Gray's  mind  worked  by  details.  In  the  midst  of 
such  occupations  which  are  in  themselves  the  leisure  of 
a  college  life,  he  sometimes  found  time  to  write,  or  to 
cancel,  a  line  of  his  poetry,  to  file  a  phrase  or  meditate 
an  epithet,  and  from  one  nine  years  to  another  to  publish 
a  poem.  There  was  no  hurry,  no  need;  he  never  wrote 
for  the  public,  nor  for  money;  he  made  verses  as  a  man 
of  taste,  just  as  he  collected  butterflies  or  prints,  for 
his  own  pleasure. 

There  is  no  psychological  problem,  no  temperamental 
puzzle  in  Gray.  The  inquiry  why  he  wrote  so  little, 
which  seems  to  be  the  main  concern  of  his  critics,  is 
futile.  Ill  health,  low  spirits,  dissipation  of  mind  on  a 
multitude  of  pursuits  and  interests  are  alleged  as  one 
reason;  but  great  poets  have  been  so  afflicted  without  los 
ing  their  voice.  That  he  fell  on  an  age  of  prose  is  also 
brought  forward  to  account  for  the  fact;  but  his  own  mind 
was  not  at  all  prosaic;  even  the  pursuit  of  science  could 
not  make  it  so.  He  did  not  choose,  did  not  care  to  write 
very  much.  What  he  did  write  he  wished  to  be  perfect  — 
just  as  every  letter  of  his  manuscript  is  carefully  made, 
even  in  .his  loosest  notes.  He  had  no  great  range  in  the 
world  of  poetry.  He  was  interested  in  neither  strong 
emotions  nor  great  ideas.  In  religion  being,  as  he  said, 
no  great  wit,  he  believed  in  a  God;  and  he  left  the 
matter  there.  He  was  never  emotionally  stirred  by  any 
great  experience  beyond  that  bereavement  which  is  the 
common  human  heritage.  All  his  life  was  at  a  low 
temperature,  and  the  reasons  of  his  infertility  seem  less 
circumstantial  than  constitutional. 


GRAY  249 

9 

The  classicism,  in  which  he  was  intellectually  bred, 
suggested  and  gave  body  and  form  to  his  development. 
He  was  chiefly  a  moralist;  in  substance  of  the  Latin 
Ifcdition,  using  the  Roman  mode  of  abstract  imagination 
and  bringing  forward  those  contemporary  eighteenth- 
century  figures  of  Fear,  or  Madness,  or  Adversity,  which 
together  make  a  kind  of  philosophical  and  bodiless 
mythology  in  which  man's  psychical  fortunes  are  external 
ized  like  phantoms  —  bloodless  and  weak  creatures  that 
are  to  true  mythology  what  the  shade  of  Achilles  in 
Hades  was  to  the  glorious  earthly  manhood  of  the  hero. 
The  treatment,  however,  was  far  better  than  the  sub 
stance,  for  he  employed  for  this  the  original  Greek 
method  of  idyllic  art.  He  was  characterized,  as  I  have 
said,  by  interest  in  detail.  In  his  art  it  is  the  same. 
He  was  a  connoisseur  in  words,  and  thought  that  poetry 
has  a  diction  of  its  own,  more  select  than  the  language 
of  common  life,  and  he  was  careful  to  employ  this  colored 
and  somewhat  exquisite  language,  word  by  word.  He 
built  the  line  out  of  the  words,  and  the  line  rather  than 
the  phrase  is  his  unit  of  style.  He  filed  each  line,  and 
composed  the  stanza,  and  of  the  stanzas  the  completed 
poem.  At  each  step  he  took  a  short  view;  to  have  the 
fit  word,  the  well-molded  line,  the  stanza,  the  poem.  In 
all  this  process  he  worked  by  the  method  of  detail;  it 
is  what  we  sometimes  call  in  verse  jeweler's  work,  or 
miniature  work.  The  latter  phrase  is  the  most  suggest 
ive,  for  it  indicates  that  the  poem  is  made  up  of  suc 
cessive  pictures,  linked  together  in  a  larger  composition, 
or  else  simply  left  to  succeed  each  other  in  a  pleasing 
order.  This  is  the  classical  idyllic  method  of  verse, 
which  he  learned  at  first  hand  from  the  Greek,  but  in  the 
English  use  of  which  he  was  instructed  by  Milton  in 


250  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

such  a  poem  as  "L/ Allegro"  and  its  companion  piece. 
The  method  is  most  familiar  to  us  in  Tennyson's  "Palace 
of  Art"  or  "Lady  of  Shalott." 

Gray  was  not  so  finished  an  artist  as  Milton  or  Tenny 
son,  and  one  reason  of  this  is,  I  think,  because  he  was 
more  directly  and  exclusively  dependent  on  his  taste  in 
the  fine  arts.  It  is  true  that  he  had  natural  taste,  and 
knew  that  poetry  is  good  only  when  born  in  the  open, 
or  must  be  written,  in  Arnold's  phrase,  with  the  eye  on 
the  object.  It  is  not  a  very  adequate  phrase,  for  it  sug 
gests  realistic  rather  than  imaginative  treatment.  Gray's 
eye  was  certainly  not  on  any  object  when  he  wrote:  — 

"Now  the  golden  Morn  aloft 
Waves  her  dew-bespangled  wing, 
With  vermeil  cheek  and  whisper  soft 
She  wooes  the  tardy  Spring;  " 

but  one  feels  in  these  lines  the  reminiscence  of  painting 
—  the  "vermeil  cheek"  is  the  glowing  of  the  color 
softened  as  he  had  seen  it  on  canvas  and  not  on  any 
ruddy  English  maiden.  The  whole  passage  is  fresco 
painting;  and  so,  it  seems  to  me,  as  I  read  on,  I  see  a 
painted  landscape:  — 

"Yesterday  the  sullen  year 
Saw  the  snowy  whirlwind  fly; 
Mute  was  the  music  of  the  air, 
The  herd  stood  drooping  by." 

This  is  a  natural  scene,  but  it  is  carefully  composed,  the 
atmosphere  of  the  snow-squall  first,  and  the  herd  in  the 
foreground.  Farther  on,  the  poem  becomes  frankly  pic 
torial,  using  the  painter's  art  as  a  metaphor  and  not  to 
form  a  picture:  — 


GRAY  251 

"The  hues  of  bliss  more  brightly  glow, 
Chastised  by  sabler  tints  of  woe, 
And  blended  form,  with  artful  strife, 
The  strength  and  harmony  of  life." 

The  method  of  this  poem  is  obviously  that  of  painting 
in  these  passages. 

It  appears  to  me  also  that  he  uses  composition  —  I 
mean  the  grouping  of  figures  —  very  often  to  give  such 
life  as  is  possible  to  those  dreary  figures  of  the  family 
of  sorrow,  and  make  them  pleasing;  unless  he  does  so, 
he  leaves  the  present  generation  at  least  with  a  very 
dissatisfied  sense  of  beholding  merely  allegoric  images 
little  alluring  in  themselves.  I  mean  such  composition 
as  this:  — 

"Amazement  in  his  van,  with  Flight  combined, 
And  Sorrow's  faded  form,  and  Solitude  behind." 

So,  too,  the  same  holds  of  the  numerous  dances,  rings, 
and  bevies  to  be  found  in  his  verse,  all  of  which  seem 
to  me  like  reminiscences  of  wall-painting.  His  imagi 
nation  was  internally  controlled  by  the  art  of  painting, 
even  when  most  natural;  it  is  not  merely  in  the  occa 
sional  coloring  and  composition,  such  as  I  have  instanced, 
but  especially  in  his  habitual  careful  use  of  perspective. 
In  nearly  every  poem  examples  may  be  found  of  this 
peculiar  sensitiveness  to  distance,  and  he  seldom  fails 
to  give  either  horizon  or  centering  to  the  view.  The 
first  stanza  of  the  Eton  Ode  gives  an  easy  example  of 
such  a  prospect,  complete  in  background,  in  fore 
ground:  — 

"Ye  distant  spires,  ye  antique  towers, 
That  crown  the  watery  glade, 
Where  grateful  Science  still  adores 


2SZ  THE   INSPIRATION    OF    POETRY 

Her  Henry's  holy  shade; 

And  ye  that  from  the  stately  brow 

Of  Windsor's  heights  the  expanse  below 

Of  grove,  of  lawn,  of  mead  survey, 

Whose  turf,  whose  shade,  whose  flowers  among 

Wanders  the  hoary  Thames  along 

His  silver-winding  way." 

Generally,  however,  it  is  by  a  brief  stroke  that  the  effect, 
the  idyllic  picture,  is  given.  He  was  especially  fond  of 
the  sight  of  a  distant  march  on  the  mountain-side.  Here 
are  some  instances  which  need  only  to  be  read  —  this  of 
the  sunrise:  — 

"Night  and  all  her  sickly  dews, 
Her  specters  wan,  and  birds  of  boding  cry, 
He  gives  to  range  the  dreary  sky: 
Till  down  the  eastern  cliffs  afar 
Hyperion's  march  they  spy,  and  glittering  shafts 
of  war." 

Or  this:  — 

"Such  were  the  sounds  that  o'er  the  crested  pride 
Of  the  first  Edward  scattered  wild  dismay, 
As  down  the  steep  of  Snowdon's  shaggy  side 
He  wound  with  toilsome  march  his  long  array." 

Or  this  very  simple  but  perfect  scene:    — 

"Far,  far  aloof  the  affrighted  ravens  sail; 
The  famished  eagle  screams,  and  passes  by." 

And  that  other  eagle  — 

"Nor  the  pride,  nor  ample  pinion, 
That  the  Theban  eagle  bear, 
Sailing  with  supreme  dominion 
Through  the  azure  deep  of  air." 

Or  for  a  near  scene,  and  one  illustrating  Gray's  love  oi 
wild  majesty  in  nature:  — 


GRAY  253 

Hark,  how  each  giant  oak  and  desert  cave 
Sighs  to  the  torrent's  awful  voice  beneath!" 

Or,  again,  the  well-known  image  of  the  progress  of 
poetry:  — 

"Now  the  rich  stream  of  Music  winds  along, 
Deep,  majestic,  smooth,  and  strong, 
Through  verdant  vales,  and  Ceres'  golden  reign; 
Now  rolling  down  the  steep  amain, 
Headlong,  impetuous,  see  it  pour; 
The  rocks  and  nodding  groves  rebellow  to  the  roar." 

The  same  poem  yields  another  of  those  large-motioned 
scenes  on  the  wide  prospect:  — 

"Behold  where  Dryden's  less  presumptuous  car 
Wide  o'er  the  fields  of  Glory  bear 
Two  coursers  of  ethereal  race, 
With  necks  in  thunder  clothed  and  long-resounding  pace." 

Examination  will  show,  I  think,  the  predominance  in 
Gray's  imagination  of  scenes  thus  guided  by  his  eye 
for  coloring,  composition,  and  perspective  in  the  painter's 
rather  than  the  poet's  way.  He  uses  perspective  meta 
phorically  where,  for  example,  in  the  laughter  of  the 
morning  on  the  sea  the  whirlwind  "expects  his  evening 
prey,"  and  again,  just  below,  where 

"Long  years  of  havoc  urge  their  destined  course;" 

and  we  find  it,  curiously  enough,  transformed  both  to 
the  sense  of  hearing  and  the  realm  of  metaphor:  — 

"And  distant  warblings  lessen  on  my  ear, 
That  lost  in  long  futurity  expire." 

Observe,  too,  how  in  the  opening  of  the  "Elegy"  the 
landscape  is  thus  built  up,  with  the  horizon,  the  half- 
distance,  and  the  foreground:  — 


254  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

"The  curfew  tolls  the  knell  of  parting  day, 
The  lowing  herd  wind  slowly  o'er  the  lea, 
The  ploughman  homeward  plods  his  weary  way, 
And  leaves  the  world  to  darkness  and  to  me. 

"Now  fades  the  glimmering  landscape  on  the  sight, 
And  all  the  air  a  solemn  stillness  holds, 
Save  where  the  beetle  wheels  his  droning  flight, 
And  drowsy  tinklings  lull  the  distant  folds: 

"Save  that  from  yonder  ivy-mantled  tower 
The  moping  owl  does  to  the  moon  complain 
Of  such  as,  wandering  near  her  secret  bower, 
Molest  her  ancient  solitary  reign;  " 

and  the  eye  is  brought  to  rest  thus  on  the  dark  church 
yard,  with  its  shadowy  trees  and  obscure  hillocks  and 
hollows  of  the  turf. 

Gray,  then,  was  a  poet,  in  the  main  a  moralist,  using 
an  imaginative  method  to  inlay  the  moral  sentiment  of 
the  verse  with  miniatures,  in  the  Greek  idyllic  mode,  but 
miniatures  which  have  in  them  the  scope  of  fresco  and 
canvas  by  virtue  of  his  use  of  color,  composition,  and 
perspective,  for  which  he  was  indebted  to  the  fine  art  of 
painting,  by  whose  means  he  interpreted  nature  and  also 
realized  allegory.  The  scope  of  his  interest  as  a  moral 
ist  was  narrow  and  commonplace,  and  hardly  exceeded 
the  ordinary  English  view  of  life  as  a  scene  of  misery 
of  which  the  last  act  is  the  burial  service.  He  relieves 
on  his  vision  of  spring,  you  remember,  the  figure  of  the 
convalescent  invalid  as  the  climax  of  happiness  in  that 
season;  he  sees  the  Eton  schoolboys  on  a  background 
of  the  actualities  of  life  suggesting  rather  the  hospital 
and  the  jail  than  a  battle-ground;  he  leads  all  seasons 
and  fortunes  up  to  the  inevitable  hour  and  converges 


GRAY  255 

the  paths  of  glory  to  the  grave.  It  is  a  familiar  English 
view,  and  was  familiar  to  our  fathers  at  least.  He  is 
not  lacking  in  other  powers,  in  satirical  and  light,  almost 
gay,  verse,  as  in  the  story  of  the  cat  and  the  goldfish, 
where  he  paints  the  fate  of  lovely  woman.  It  is  not  a 
cheerful  fate,  though  cheerfully  described.  Nor  is  there 
anything  cheerful  in  Gray,  except  the  alleviations  of 
our  misery  by  the  rosy  hours  of  morning,  the  fragrance 
breathing  from  the  ground,  and  the  bliss  of  ignorance 
in  school  days.  The  characteristic  of  Gray  is  a  somber 
view,  in  which  brilliant  artistic  colors  are  inlaid  by  an 
imaginative  rendering  of  history  and  nature.  His  artis 
tic  faculty  distinguishes  him  in  his  commonplace  moral 
ity;  but  as  a  leader  in  a  new  world,  with  the  passion  and 
power  to  bring  it  into  being,  he  seems  to  have  no  place, 
nor  was  there  in  his  life  the  fermentation  of  any  pro 
found  experience. 

He  does  present,  nevertheless,  certain  faint  signs  of  the 
characteristics  of  poetic  genius.  For  one  thing,  his  verse 
was  an  innovation.  Excepting  the  "Elegy,"  which,  as 
he  truly  said,  succeeded  by  its  subject  and  would  have 
succeeded  had  it  been  prose,  his  verse  was  a  puzzle  to  his 
contemporaries  and  its  acceptance  was  slow;  it  was 
long  before  men  selected  him  as  without  question  the 
chief  poet  of  his  generation,  and  longer  before  they  knew 
that  his  works  were  a  classic  of  his  language.  Yet  he 
originated  nothing;  his  originality  lay  only  in  the  fact 
that,  being  sincere  and  having  a  sound  critical  faculty 
of  high  order,  he  was  true  to  the  great  tradition  of  poetry 
which  had  been  lost  in  England,  and  by  his  respect  for 
Shakespeare  and  Milton  and  for  the  ancient  classics  he 
was  enabled  to  cultivate  the  qualities  of  imagination, 
melody,  and  nature  which  are  essential  to  poetry.  He 


256  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

was  saved  from  his  century  by  his  taste.  He  was,  how 
ever,  so  exceptional  in  this  that  his  practice  had  the  force 
of  originality,  being  an  innovation,  and  he  to  this  extent 
suffered  the  initial  contempt  that  a  poet  often  receives 
in  his  own  age.  But  he  was  an  innovator,  a  pioneer  in 
more  important  ways.  It  is  obvious  in  his  learned  tastes 
that  he  was  not  only  in  advance  of  his  age,  but  in 
advance  along  the  whole  line.  His  study  of  both  science 
and  history  foreknew  the  great  career  of  both  these 
branches  in  the  next  century.  He  was  an  archeologist, 
too,  in  the  kingdom  of  which  many  of  us  now  live.  And 
besides  these  broad  premonitions  of  the  age  to  come,  he 
had  the  clarity  of  genius  in  three  specific  particulars  in 
his  own  art. 

The  first  of  these  prophetic  traits  was  his  devotion  to 
Greek.  It  is  true  that  in  this  he  was  the  heir  of  Milton 
and  the  humanists,  but  he  went  forward  well  into  the 
paths  of  our  quite  different  modern  scholarship.  Three 
times  in  the  last  century  English  poetry  has  been  dipped 
in  Castaly  all  over,  and  risen  radiant  from  the  bath:  in 
the  person  of  Shelley  and  his  comrades,  in  that  of  Tenny 
son,  and  in  that  of  Swinburne.  Gray  was  the  premoni 
tion  of  this,  and  a  forerunner  as  was  none  of  his  contem 
poraries.  Secondly,  he  was  a  discoverer  of  the  romance 
of  primitive  literature.  He  was  made  enthusiastic  by 
Ossian,  and  valued  that  verse  much  as  did  men  upon  the 
Continent.  He  was  attracted  by  Gaelic,  and  the  monu 
ment  of  this  is  that  Welsh  ode  from  which  I  have  read, 
which  is  poetically  his  greatest  work,  with  touches  of 
the  sublime  in  both  its  mood  and  language  —  a  great 
English  ode.  In  obeying  this  taste  he  showed  that  glim 
mer  of  the  romantic  dawn,  then  far  away,  which  brought 
with  it  the  romance  of  the  Highlands  and  the  Sagas,  the 


GRAY  257 

•«, 

old  Saxon  poetry,  the  Song  of  Roland,  and  all  the  early 
literature  of  the  romance  tongue,  and  which  now  includes 
the  ingathering  from  all  primitive  peoples.  Thirdly,  he 
was  a  lover  of  wild  and  majestic  scenery,  and  of  the 
picturesque  beauty  of  the  English  land,  a  landscape 
lover,  and  even  in  his  prose  notes  later  poets  have  found 
ore  for  their  own  golden  lines.  In  this  he  foreran  the 
poetry  of  nature,  which  became  so  large  an  element  in 
the  romantic  age.  He  did  not  philosophize  nature,  nor 
etherealize  it,  nor  idealize  it;  but  he  saw  it  and  re 
sponded.  In  comparison  with  the  great  nature-poets, 
such  as  Wordsworth  and  Byron,  his  rendering  of  nature 
is  slight  indeed ;  it  is,  perhaps,  no  more  than  the  brighten 
ing  of  our  willow  stems  in  the  clear  east  winds  of  morn 
ing  hours,  but  it  is  a  sign  of  spring.  In  these  three  ways, 
each  a  main  direction  of  development,  Gray  was  a  sharer 
in  that  quality  of  genius  by  which  it  is  symptomatic  of 
the  future,  sentient  of  it,  and  an  exponent  of  it  before 
the  fact. 

But,  though  we  may  trace  these  ties  of  consanguinity 
with  the  great  poets  and  find  a  few  drops  of  the  royal 
blood  in  Gray,  yet  if  we  are  true  to  our  own  impres 
sion  and  speak  justly,  I  think  that  neither  passion  nor 
prescience  of  change  are  much  in  our  minds  when  we 
read  his  verse.  It  is  true  that  his  poetry  displays  more 
passion  than  that  of  his  contemporaries,  in  its  lyric  fulness 
and  sweep;  but,  after  all,  it  is  a  reminiscence  and  not  an 
inspiration,  it  is  stylistic  passion,  a  passion  for  the  roll 
and  fall  of  words,  a  passion  of  rhetoric,  and  it  is  an  echo, 
besides,  given  back  by  his  classical  tastes.  He  likes  to 
show  the  tone  and  compass  of  his  instrument,  and  the 
instrument  is  the  lyre.  At  his  best  he  is  remembering 
Pindar;  and  as  in  that  picture  I  read  of  the  Theban 


258  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

eagle,  he  seems  to  be  rather  drawing  on  paper  the  evo 
lutions  of  the  bird  than  taking  flight  himself. 

Our  main  feeling  after  reading  him  is  that  he  is  classic. 
No  other  English  poet  gives  the  feeling  in  so  pure  a 
form;  as  if,  except  for  the  coloring  of  time,  he  might 
have  written  these  pieces,  that  seem  relics  and  frag 
ments,  being  so  few,  in  some  far-off  century  in  Ionia. 
One  critic,  Professor  Tovey,  the  best  it  seems  to  me  of 
Gray,  says,  very  appositely,  "that  poetry  is  the  most 
securely  immortal  which  has  gained  nothing  and  can  lose 
nothing  by  the  vicissitudes  of  sentiment  and  opinion." 
That  is  a  mark  of  the  classic,  and  Gray  bears  it.  To 
rise  outside  of  the  circle  of  change  is  hardly  given  to 
mortals,  but  one  mode  of  approaching  such  a  state  is  to 
live  in  commonplace.  Gray  was  a  contemplative  moral 
ist,  and  his  thought  is  commonplace;  but  if  he  had  a 
passion  for  anything,  it  was  for  perfection,  for  finish,  in 
the  way  of  expression;  and  by  virtue  of  this  instinct, 
which  never  slept  in  him,  he  dignified  and  adorned  the 
commonplace  English  view  of  life.  He,  moreover,  was 
somber;  and  he  chose  for  his  theme  the  most  solemn 
point  of  view  in  life,  the  resting  place  after  death.  He 
was  very  sincere  in  this;  you  will  find,  from  early  days, 
in  his  letters  to  his  friends  the  idea  that  men  are  at  their 
best,  that  the  soul  is  in  its  best  earthly  estate,  in  the 
times  of  their  bereavement.  He  certainly  believed  this, 
and  his  poetry  is  indebted  to  this  profound  belief.  The 
"Elegy"  is  a  universal  poem,  because  its  material  is 
so  commonplace  that  it  might,  as  he  suggested,  have  been 
written  in  prose,  but  it  is  dignified  and  adorned,  per 
fected  in  expression  till  it  seems  as  inevitable  in  every 
word  as  the  "inevitable  hour"  itself.  This  artistic  hand 
ling  of  the  theme  is  what  the  poet  in  Gray  added  to  the 


GRAY  259 

•» 

phraser  of  commonplaces;  the  combination  works  the 
miracle  that  such  a  gentleman  as  Gray  was,  such  a 
remote  scholar  as  he  was,  should  turn  out  to  be  the  poet 
of  ordinary  people.  Gray,  as  I  said,  was  very  humane; 
in  essentials  an  ordinary  human  nature  deepened  into 
poetry  by  a  grave  tenderness  of  feeling  and  expressing 
himself  with  a  pure  clarity  of  thought.  Though  a  classic, 
he  does  not  belong  with  the  great  poets.  His  work  re 
minds  me  most  often  of  the  minor  craftsmanship  of  the 
Greek  artisans,  who  made  of  common  clay  for  common 
use  the  images  and  funeral  urns;  such  seems  to  me  the 
material  of  his  poems;  but  in  form  how  perfect  they  are, 
both  for  grace  and  dignity,  and  they  are  adorned,  like  the 
Greek  vases,  with  designs,  little  pictures,  imitated  from 
and  echoing  the  greater  arts.  If  the  poetic  fire  in  them 
be  rather  a  warmth  than  a  flame,  yet  they  are  lovely  re 
ceptacles  of  its  half-extinct  ashes. 


VI 

TASSO 

THE  poetic  temperament  is  consanguineous  in  all  the 
poets,  and  hence  in  passing  from  one  to  another  one  is 
always  noticing  some  sign  of  kinship.  Tasso  reminds  us 
of  certain  traits  of  both  Gray  and  Byron;  the  classical 
scholarship  of  the  one  and  the  Mediterranean  quality  of 
the  other  ally  them  to  the  Italian,  and  the  melancholy 
which  in  one  was  an  elegy  of  the  churchyard  and  in  the 
other  an  elegy  of  nations,  becomes  in  Tasso  an  elegy 
of  life  itself;  moreover,  there  was  in  Tasso's  personality 
an  irritable  self-consciousness  that  recalls  Byron's  ego 
istical  sensitiveness.  In  another  way  Tasso  so  exceeded 
Gray  in  power,  and  Byron  in  charm,  that  he  seems  out  of 
their  class;  and  he  has  always  been  in  men's  memories  so 
signal  an  example  of  the  misfortune  that  attends  the  poets 
as  to  seem  almost  solitary  in  his  miseries. 

He  was  by  his  nature  exposed  to  every  acute  feeling; 
and  his  education  was  such  as  to  increase  his  peril,  and 
make  his  sorrow  sure.  He  was  the  son  of  a  distinguished 
poet,  of  noble  family,  and  born  at  Sorrento;  his  memory 
still  haunts  the  place,  but  his  residence  there  was  brief, 
and  his  life  is  associated  rather  with  the  north  of  Italy, 
whence  his  family  came  from  a  town  near  Venice.  Still 
a  child,  he  was  separated  from  his  mother,  his  father 
being  in  trouble  and  a  wanderer,  and  he  never  saw  her 
afterward;  it  is  probable  that  she  was  poisoned.  He 
joined  his  father,  and  was  educated  at  the  court  of  Urbino, 

261 


262  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

and  the  Universities  of  Padua  and  Bologna.  He  was 
an  extraordinarily  precocious  child,  and  while  still  at 
Sorrento  had  been  given  into  the  hands  of  the  Jesuit 
fathers,  who  impressed  upon  him  that  religiousness  which 
so  deeply  marked  him  and  was  the  cause  of  much  of 
his  suffering.  He  took  his  first  communion  at  the  age 
of  nine;  he  recited  original  verses  and  speeches  at  the 
age  of  ten;  and  while  yet  but  eighteen,  he  published  a 
considerable  poem,  "Rinaldo,"  which  immediately  gave 
him  great  reputation  in  Italy,  and  determined  his 
career. 

He  entered  the  service  of  the  Duke  of  Ferrara,  with 
whose  name  his  biography  is  most  closely  joined.  His 
life  is  obscure  with  mysteries  that  time  has  not  cleared 
away.  He  was  a  favorite  of  the  Duke;  yet  in  the  height 
of  his  fame,  the  Duke  put  him  in  prison  and  kept  him 
there  for  over  seven  years,  in  spite  of  protests  and  peti 
tions  from  princes  and  prelates  and  other  persons  of  im 
portance.  It  was  long  supposed  that  the  reason  was 
Tasso's  devotion  to  the  Duke's  sister,  who  was  his  friend 
and  the  lady  of  his  sonnets.  The  weight  of  opinion  now 
is  that,  whatever  concurring  causes  there  may  have  been, 
Tasso's  own  condition  and  conduct  gave  sufficient  excuse 
for  restraint.  He  had  within  him  the  germs  of  insanity, 
and  with  every  year  they  seem  to  have  shown  more  vio 
lent  manifestation.  He  was  full  of  suspicion  and  re 
sentments,  and  repeatedly  had  left  his  patron  suddenly 
and  gone  to  others,  only  to  return  again;  he  had  hallu 
cinations  also;  and,  as  time  went  on,  he  saw  and  con 
versed  with  spirits;  sometimes  it  was  his  worldly  or 
literary  affairs,  sometimes  his  religious  fears  that  were 
the  motives  and  subjects  of  this  mental  disturbance;  the 
Duke  said  that  he  kept  Tasso  confined  in  order  to  cure 


TASSO  263 

him.  He  was  allowed  full  liberty  of  correspondence,  and 
was  seen  by  friends  and  visitors.  Montaigne  so  saw  him 
—  the  poet  being  asleep  apparently  and  shown  by  his 
jailer.  Tasso's  letters  are  full  of  details  and  terrible 
complaints;  but  how  much  of  what  he  wrote  may  he  not 
have  fancied?  The  facts  are  insoluble.  Some  ascribe 
his  madness  to  his  love,  some  to  his  religious  education. 
At  all  events  the  care  of  the  insane  was  then  but  a  poor 
sort  of  medicine,  and  prisons  in  those  days  were  places 
of  negligence,  filth,  and  sickness.  If  only  a  small  part 
of  what  Tasso  relates  of  his  confinement  is  true,  it  is 
enough  to  justify  the  pity  that  he  has  always  received. 
It  is  singular,  if  there  were  no  other  reason  for  the  Duke's 
conduct  than  the  poet's  mental  state,  that  he  should  so 
obstinately  have  refused  to  let  him  go  into  the  care  of 
other  princes  and  courts  who  were  anxious  to  receive  and 
aid  him.  At  last  he  was  released;  and  after  that  time  he 
lived  mainly  at  Naples  and  Rome,  where  he  died  at  the 
age  of  fifty  years,  just  before  he  was  to  be  publicly 
crowned  with  laurel  in  the  Capitol. 

It  does  not  appear  that,  except  for  a  few  outbursts  of 
violence,  his  insanity  was  such  as  to  interfere  with  the 
usual  action  of  his  intellectual  powers  as  a  scholar  and 
a  poet;  the  higher  faculties  were  left  untouched,  while 
his  sense  of  fact  was  subject  to  delusion.  His  young 
friend,  Manso,  was  a  witness  of  a  conversation  at  Naples 
between  Tasso  and  the  spirit  with  whom  he  talked;  both 
voices,  says  Manso,  were  Tasso's,  though  he  did  not  seem 
aware  of  it.  Such  was  Tasso's  madness  —  an  over- 
excitement  of  genius;  in  consequence  he  passed  much 
of  his  life  in  prison  or  in  wanderings  from  city  to  city 
in  Italy,  often  with  much  hardship,  but  oftener  treated 
with  kindness  and  great  honor,  except  that  at  Ferrara 


264  THE    INSPIRATION   OF    POETRY 

the  fact  of  his  fame  and  his  favor  in  the  earlier  years 
exposed  him  to  the  jealous  persecution  natural  to  a  small 
court.  He  was  a  man  very  masculine  in  appearance, 
uncommonly  tall,  broad-shouldered,  grave  in  demeanor, 
of  the  blond  type,  with  blue  eyes,  well-exercised  in  the 
use  of  arms.  He  stammered,  and  seldom  laughed,  and 
was  slow  in  talk.  But  this  portrait  from  his  last  years, 
and  the  pale  sunken  cheeks  and  worn  look,  which  are 
also  mentioned,  belong  rather  to  the  victim  of  life  than 
to  the  young  poet  who  wrote  the  great  Italian  epic,  "Je 
rusalem  Delivered." 

Tasso  was  a  voluminous  writer.  His  works  fill  thirty- 
three  large  volumes;  but  his  fame  is  comprised  within 
the  limits  of  this  epic,  and  of  another  small  pastoral 
drama,  "Aminta,"  which  is  related  to  his  genius  some 
what  as  "Hero  and  Leander"  is  to  Marlowe.  Apart 
from  the  brutal  miseries  of  his  life,  the  true  and  unavoid 
able  tragedy  of  it  lay  in  a  conflict  which  took  place  within 
his  own  nature.  He  was  a  poet  with  the  qualities  of 
one;  but  his  temperament  was  developed  in  a  double 
way.  On  the  one  hand  it  was  an  artistic  nature 
grounded  in  scholarship,  not  unlike  Gray  in  that  respect; 
on  the  other  hand  it  was  a  religious  nature  grounded  in 
the  asceticism  and  exaltation  of  the  Jesuit  training  of 
his  precocious  childhood.  The  two  natures  were  contra 
dictory;  and  in  the  lifelong  struggle  between  them,  re 
flected  in  his  literary  work,  the  religious  nature  finally 
triumphed.  In  his  last  years  he  rewrote  his  epic,  and 
left  out  its  charm  in  obedience  to  his  conscience;  but 
fortunately  the  original  version  was  already  in  the  hands 
of  the  world,  and  the  later  one  is  now  completely  for 
gotten. 

He  had  chosen  his  subject  and  sketched  out  parts,  at 


TASSO  265 

least,  of  the  poem  before  he  was  twenty  years  old;  and 
as  he  composed,  he  labored  over  the  verse,  and  refined 
and  revised  it,  with  great  care.  It  was  the  period  known 
as  the  Catholic  Reaction,  during  which  the  Church 
crushed  the  Reformation  in  Italy  and  withered  the 
Renaissance  there,  and  thus  prepared  for  Italy  the  cen 
turies  of  her  servitude  from  which  she  has  arisen  only 
in  our  day.  Tasso  was  acutely  anxious  that  his  poem 
should  be  in  harmony  with  Catholic  truth  and  pious  feel 
ing,  and  he  submitted  it  to  ecclesiastical  criticism;  the 
worry  of  his  mind  over  the  trouble  that  thus  arose  was, 
it  must  be  thought,  one  grave  cause  of  his  malady;  but 
though  he  modified  the  verse,  he  did  not  then  entirely 
destroy  what  he  loved  so  much,  its  poetic  beauty.  He 
had  chosen  a  Christian  theme,  the  recovery  of  Christ's 
sepulchre  by  the  crusading  knights,  and  he  would  treat 
it  worthily,  with  seriousness  and  piety;  but  nevertheless 
the  poetic  art  was  a  tradition,  and  he  was  bound,  as  a 
scholar  with  the  tastes  and  principles  of  the  Renais 
sance,  to  obey  the  tradition  of  Homer  and  Virgil  no  less 
than  he  was  obliged  as  a  faithful  son  of  the  Church  to 
listen  respectfully  to  the  views  of  Puritan  Cardinals.  He 
must  write  a  classic  epic;  and  the  poem  is,  in  fact,  not 
only  classical  in  its  general  conduct  and  method,  but  in 
detail  echoes  the  "Iliad"  and  the  "^Eneid"  much  as  Milton 
echoes  the  Bible,  and  a  reader  familiar  with  the  classics 
takes  the  same  pleasure  in  these  echoes  that  a  reader 
familiar  with  the  Bible  takes  in  the  words  and  imagery  of 
"Paradise  Lost." 

The  epic,  however,  when  it  came  into  Tasso's  hands, 
had  added  something  to  the  classic  tradition,  and  had 
changed  it  in  important  particulars;  especially  two  things 
had  been  brought  prominently  forward,  namely,  magic, 


266  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

and  the  interest  of  love.  The  presence  of  these  two  new 
elements  in  their  degree  of  development  made  of  the  epic 
so  different  a  thing,  that  a  new  name  was  coined  to 
describe  it,  and  it  was  called  a  romantic  epic  in  opposi 
tion  to  the  older  style.  Tasso's  theme  was  an  admirable 
epic  subject;  it  was  noble  in  itself,  and  one  in  which  the 
powers  of  heaven  and  hell,  whose  participation  was 
thought  necessary  in  epic  verse,  could  appropriately  be 
introduced;  the  combatants  on  both  sides  were  worthy 
champions,  so  that  the  martial  interest  could  be  well 
maintained;  and  the  subject  was  made  Italian  and 
brought  home  to  the  present  hour  by  the  link  that  bound 
the  poem  to  the  House  of  Este,  at  Ferrara.  In  fact, 
the  entire  ground  of  the  poem  was  near  to  the  contem 
porary  age,  in  the  point  that  the  Mohammedan  power 
was  still  a  dreaded  foe  and  held  the  Mediterranean,  so 
that  the  feeling  of  hostility  was  acute,  and,  besides,  the 
physical  aspect  of  the  Saracen  East  was  well  known; 
Italy  and  Christendom  still  faced  that  way.  The  taking 
of  Jerusalem  was  a  more  contemporary  topic  than  we 
are  apt  to  think,  and  the  poem  appealed  to  a  living  fear 
and  hatred;  thus,  though  not  a  national  poem,  it  had 
some  of  the  qualities  of  one,  and  it  stirred  a  martial 
ardor  not  wholly  extinct. 

The  martial  interest  is  in  the  foreground,  and  is  de 
veloped  in  the  verse  to  the  greatest  degree  possible.  The 
course  of  the  war  is  deployed  with  skill,  so  as  to  open 
an  ever  wider  field  of  operation  and  to  increase  steadily 
in  importance  and  interest  till  it  culminates  in  the  fall 
of  the  city.  In  detail  every  kind  of  warfare  is  depicted 
—  the  single  combat  by  challenge,  the  personal  en 
counters  by  accident,  the  melee  of  the  armies  and  the 
individual  fight  in  its  midst,  the  night  attack,  the  siege, 


TASSO  267 

** 

the  assault  —  every  variety  of  battle,  even  to  the  cut 
ting  off  and  total  destruction  of  a  corps  marching  to 
the  assistance  of  the  Christians  under  a  Danish  chief, 
which  may  perhaps  be  exemplified  for  us  by  such  an 
action  as  the  Indian  massacre  of  Custer's  command. 
Tasso's  descriptions  of  these  scenes  are  admirable  for 
spirit  and  variety  of  detail,  and  I  find  his  military 
operations  less  tedious  than  those  of  most  epics.  In 
the  contrast  of  the  two  civilizations  he  is  also  successful, 
and  he  renders  the  opposition  of  creed  and  manners,  the 
barbaric  and  the  pagan  to  the  civilized  and  the  Christian, 
with  vividness  and  yet  not  so  as  to  degrade  the  enemy. 
In  the  characterization,  again,  on  both  sides  he  is  excel 
lent,  and  he  gives  much  distinctness  even  to  the  minor 
persons,  which  is  unusual  in  epics,  while  the  heroes  are 
vigorously  and  diversely  drawn.  The  main  heroes  are, 
of  course,  removed  from  the  field  early  in  the  action  by 
one  device  and  another  in  order  to  give  the  others  their 
opportunity  to  act,  while  the  greater  characters  them 
selves  come  in  to  make  the  climax  of  interest  and  valor 
toward  the  end.  All  this  is  in  the  ancient  classical  man 
ner,  like  the  "^neid"  and  "Iliad."  So  is  the  bringing  in 
of  the  supernatural  powers,  the  angels  on  one  side  and 
the  devils  on  the  other,  corresponding  to  the  partisan 
ship  of  the  gods  in  the  old  epics;  but  here  Tasso  suffers 
from  the  powerful  rivalry  of  Milton.  Tasso's  devils 
are  merely  medieval  monsters,  and  his  angels  have 
little  to  do.  His  imagination  would  in  any  case  have 
been  checked  in  its  free  action  by  Catholic  scruples. 

The  place  of  the  old  gods  of  Olympus  is,  however, 
really  taken  by  the  romantic  element  of  magic,  in  obedi 
ence  to  which  indeed  the  devils  also  act;  and  it  is  not  in 
the  court  of  Heaven,  but  in  the  witch,  Armida,  that  the 


268  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

counterpart  of  Juno's  hatred  for  the  Trojans  is  to  be 
found.  Magic  had  been  popularized  in  poetry,  especially 
by  Ariosto,  and  Tasso  followed  here  this  master  and  the 
popular  taste.  Perhaps  to  us  the  poem  is  much  en 
feebled  thereby  and  loses  reality;  it  seems  so  to  me,  at 
least;  it  becomes  almost  a  fable,  Arabian.  On  the  other 
hand,  magic  as  an  artistic  device  frees  the  fancy  of  Tasso 
and  makes  him  the  master  of  surprise.  It  is  here  that 
he  begins  to  be  himself,  and  to  write  with  his  own  un 
aided  hand;  but  it  is  in  the  second  element  that  he 
derived  from  the  romantic  epic  —  the  element  of  love  — 
that  he  is  the  master  and  comes  to  his  own.  If  he  treats 
of  battle  in  all  its  phases,  it  is  from  a  sense  of  duty,  in 
part;  but  he  depicts  love  in  its  various  forms  because 
it  is  his  pleasure.  War  he  learned  from  other  men's 
books,  and  mastered  by  imagination;  but  in  love  he  was 
lessoned  only  by  his  own  heart,  and  in  the  story  he  gave 
out  experience.  It  is  the  more  singular  because  he  was 
not  of  an  amorous  nature,  but  was  rather  indulgent  to 
ascetic  feelings.  His  imagination  was  warm,  and  it  is 
rather  the  sentiment  than  the  passion  of  love  that  he 
depicts;  and  he  always  blends  it  with  nobleness  of  nature. 
Dante's  line  —  "love  is  but  one  thing  with  the  gentle 
heart"  —  might  be  the  formula  of  all  these  varied  scenes. 
In  the  second  canto  he  introduces  one  such  episode, 
and  one  that  was  so  cherished  by  him  that  he  refused  to 
cut  it  out  at  the  bidding  of  the  ecclesiastics  who  advised 
him.  It  is  the  story  of  the  Christian  maid,  Sophronia, 
who  is  drawn  almost  like  a  nun,  and  who  to  save  her 
people  confesses  to  an  act  that  had  incensed  the  tyrant 
ruler  of  Jerusalem;  she  stands  at  the  stake  to  be  burned, 
when  her  lover,  Olindo,  who  had  not  dared  to  show  his 
love,  recognizes  her,  and  at  once  confesses  to  the  same 


TASSO  269 

act;  it  is  plain  that  both  are  guiltless,  but  both  are 
condemned  to  burn  at  the  same  stake.  As  the  flames 
approach,  he  tells  her  his  love  as  being  about  to  die. 
The  execution,  however,  is  stayed  in  a  natural  way,  and 
the  two  are  released  to  a  life  together.  Such  a  happy 
issue  is  rare,  nevertheless,  in  Tasso.  It  was  believed 
that  in  Sophronia  he  drew  the  figure  of  his  lady,  Leonora, 
the  Duke's  sister,  and  in  Olindo  the  veiled  love  he  bore 
her;  and  thus  in  this  fable  pleaded  his  own  cause. 

In  the  other  great  instances  of  his  portraiture  of  love 
the  persons  are  the  leading  characters  of  the  poem,  and 
not  introduced  merely  episodically.  He  drew  three 
types.  Tancred,  the  chief  Christian  hero  after  Rinaldo, 
is  in  love  with  the  Saracen  warrior-maid,  Clorinda;  in 
his  passion  he  is  the  typical  knight  of  chivalry.  Thus 
he  fell  in  love  with  her  at  first  sight,  and  her  face  at  any 
time  makes  him  oblivious  to  all  else,  even  the  call  of 
honor  in  battle;  she,  being  an  Amazon  and  a  pagan,  is 
entirely  indifferent  to  him;  it  is  only  at  the  last  moment 
and  by  a  miracle  that,  when  being  vizored  they  fight  and 
he  kills  her,  in  the  act  of  dying  she  asks  him  for  bap 
tism  and  is  reconciled.  She  afterwards  appears  to  him 
in  a  dream  and  confesses  her  love.  Tancred  is  also  the 
hero  of  the  second  type,  Erminia,  a  Saracen  princess 
whom  he  had  rescued  and  treated  with  great  kindness 
and  who  fell  in  love  with  his  gentleness  and  nobleness. 
She  was  no  warrior,  but  a  tender  woman  to  whom  love 
gave  courage,  and  she  stole  away  from  Jerusalem  by 
night  in  the  armor  of  Clorinda,  to  go  to  the  Christian 
camp  and  heal  him  when  he  was  wounded,  for  she  under 
stood  the  art  of  healing;  but  she  was  frightened  on  the 
way  and  fled  to  some  shepherds,  with  whom  she  remains 
until  near  the  end  of  the  story,  when  she  returns  to  care 


270  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

for  him  after  Clorinda's  death.  The  third  type  is  the 
love  of  the  witch,  Armida,  for  Rinaldo;  she  enchains  this 
youth,  the  Achilles  of  the  poem,  meaning  to  destroy 
him,  but  is  overcome  by  her  love  for  him,  and  transports 
him  to  her  garden  in  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  whence  he  is 
rescued  by  holy  aid  and  recalled  to  the  war.  He  leaves 
her,  and  she  follows,  seeking  revenge,  but  still  in  love, 
and  attends  the  pagan  army;  in  the  final  defeat  she  is 
saved  by  Rinaldo,  and  desires  to  become  a  Christian 
through  her  love  for  him. 

These  three  poetic  types  of  womanhood,  the  tragic 
type  in  Clorinda,  the  pathetic  type  in  Erminia,  and  the 
romantic  type  in  Armida,  give  a  wide  compass  to  Tasso 
in  the  interpretation  of  the  passion.  In  each  case  love 
overcomes,  equally  master  over  magic,  over  the  cold 
ness  of  the  Amazon,  and  over  woman's  simple  heart; 
in  all  love  is  victorious.  The  two  knights  also  yield  to 
love;  but  the  passion  is  represented  rather  in  the  women 
than  the  men,  and  hence  the  poem  is  most  famous  for 
these  three  types  of  womanhood  rather  than  for  its 
heroic  figures,  and  more  for  love  than  for  war.  In  Spen 
ser's  "Faerie  Queene,"  you  remember,  in  the  same  way  the 
female  characters  excel  the  knights  in  interest.  Tasso 
is  thus  peculiarly  the  poet  of  love;  excellent  as  he  is 
in  the  martial  and  truly  epic  part  of  his  task,  it  is  in 
the  romantic  part  and  in  the  passion,  that  is  rather  lyrical 
than  epic,  that  he  is  a  supreme  and  unequaled  master. 
It  is  natural  to  find  that  the  traits  which  most  attract 
his  readers  are  those  that  depend  on  the  predominance 
of  love  in  the  verse. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  poem  that  its  atmosphere 
counts  for  more  than  its  substance;  the  power  of  fasci 
nation  is  in  the  atmosphere;  and,  in  fact,  the  substance 


TASSO  271 

itself  tends  to  pass  into,  to  evaporate  into,  mere  atmos 
phere.  This  is  an  important  point.  You  will  observe 
in  reading  it,  for  example,  how  large  a  part  the  landscape 
plays  in  giving  tone  to  the  most  charming  scenes.  It  is, 
of  course,  Italian  landscape  that  is  used,  though  the 
scene  is  Palestine.  It  is,  moreover,  selected  Italian  land 
scape —  seashore,  glens,  quiet  places  in  the  hills;  and, 
besides,  this  landscape  is  brightened  and  adorned,  in 
the  manner  of  painting  or  of  stage  illusion.  One  recalls 
especially  the  moonlight  scenes,  such  as  that  where  the 
light  touching  the  armor  of  Erminia  betrays  her  on  her 
flight  —  or  the  pastoral  scenes,  such  as  the  remote  spot 
where  she  found  refuge  with  the  shepherd  boys;  and 
again  the  garden  scenes,  especially  those  of  Armida's 
island,  which  gave  to  Spenser  his  Bower  of  Bliss  and  to 
Milton  his  Eden. 

It  has  been  noticed  that  light  rather  than  color  charac 
terizes  the  poem;  it  is  filled  with  light  and  chiaroscuro, 
but  not  with  hues;  in  fact,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  place 
of  color  is,  as  it  were,  taken  by  sound.  It  is  true  that 
the  poem  has  a  landscape  setting,  characteristically 
Italian,  quiet,  reposeful,  of  ideal  beauty;  but  it  has  also 
another  setting  in  the  sense  of  hearing,  which  is  con 
stantly  appealed  to,  as  if  music  in  the  strict  sense  were 
an  element  of  the  scene.  It  is  not  merely  that  the  birds 
are  always  there,  but  sound  in  many  forms  breathes  in 
various  concords.  A  brief  example  is  the  charm  that 
greets  Rinaldo  in  the  enchanted  wood  — 

"a  sound 

Sweet  as  the  airs  of  Paradise  upsprings; 
Hoarse  roars  the  shallow  brook;  the  leaves  around, 
Sigh  to  the  fluttering  of  the  light  wind's  wings; 
Her  ravishing  sweet  dirge  the  cygnet  sings, 


272  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

Loud  mourn  the  answering  nightingales ;  sad  shells, 
Flutes,  human  voices  tuned  to  golden  strings, 
And  the  loud  surging  organ's  glorious  swells/'  — 

all  these  make  up  a  hidden  orchestra  heard  in  one. 
And  again,  a  little  farther  on,  it  rises: 

"Impearled  with  manna  was  each  fresh  leaf  nigh: 
Honey  and  golden  gums  the  rude  trunks  weep; 
Again  is  heard  that  strange  wild  harmony 
Of  songs  and  sorrows,  plaintive,  mild  and  deep ; 
But  the  sweet  choirs  that  still  such  tenor  keep 
With  the  swans,  winds  and  waves,  no  ear  can  trace 
To  their  concealed  abode  in  shade  or  steep; 
Nor  harp,  nor  horn,  nor  form  of  human  face, 
Look  where  he  would,  was  seen  in  all  the  shady  place." 

Such  a  hidden  harmony  and  secret  accompaniment  go 
through  the  poem,  and  sphere  it  in  music  as  the  land 
scape  spheres  it  in  visible  beauty.  It  is  as  if  various 
belts,  like  Saturn's  rings,  were  wound  about  the  poem 
and  shed  colored  light  upon  it. 

The  Italian  is  a  subtle  genius,  and  Tasso  excels  in 
subtlety.  It  is  a  thing  difficult  to  describe,  but  more 
even  than  by  landscape  and  music  trie  poem  is  enveloped 
in  emotionalism,  of  which  perhaps  the  constant  appeal 
to  pathos  is  the  most  obvious  form.  A  simple  detached 
instance  is  the  death  of  the  Soldan's  page,  in  the  ninth 
canto,  slain  in  battle  where  like  a  child  he  was  playing 
at  war.  Every  artifice  is  used  to  enhance  the  mere  pity 
of  his  savage  death.  Pathos,  however,  pervades  the 
poem.  Emotionalism  is  still  more  intensely  present  in 
the  tragic  and  pathetic  and  romantic  treatment  of  love 
directly  in  the  three  types  already  mentioned.  It  has 
been  pointed  out  that  the  characteristic  phrase  of  Tasso 
is  that  by  which  he  so  often  expresses  his  failure  to 


TASSO  273 

express  himself  —  that  is,  his  sense  of  the  inexpressible 
—  the  phrase  non  so  che,  "I  know  not  what."  So  he 
describes  the  last  words  of  Clorinda  when  she  asked 
baptism  of  Tancred,  who  had  killed  her  — 

"Like  dying  lyres  heard  far  at  close  of  day, 
Sounding  I  know  not  what  in  the  soothed  ear 
Of  sweetest  sadness  —  the  faint  words  made  way." 

Tasso  thus  habitually  at  the  highest  moment  of  feeling 
takes  refuge  in  the  mystery  of  the  unexpressed. 

It  is  evident  that  such  qualities  as  these,  beauty  of 
such  a  type,  such  a  use  of  music,  such  pathos,  sorrow, 
and  yearning  of  life,  cannot  but  impart  weakness  to 
a  martial  epic  poem,  as  such,  and  diffuse  through  it  a 
relaxation  of  the  heroic  quality.  The  character  of  the 
heroes  is  enfeebled  in  many  ways  —  in  Tancred  and 
Rinaldo  by  the  love  element  and  in  Godfrey,  the  leader, 
by  his  prudence;  it  is  rather  among  the  Saracens  and  in 
the  minor  Christian  knights  that  the  heroic  quality  is 
most  purely  preserved,  the  simple  martial  manhood  of 
the  enterprise;  but,  in  proportion  as  the  inward  life 
enters  into  the  characterization,  as  the  psychology  be 
comes  interesting,  the  epic  power  is  diminished. 

This  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  in  the  characteristic 
part  of  his  poem  Tasso  obeys  a  lyrical  impulse.  The 
emotion  to  which  he  is  most  sensitive  is  not  martial, 
but  tender;  the  things  he  loves  are  not  the  things  of  war, 
but  of  charm;  and  more  and  more,  as  his  true  mood 
grows  upon  him,  he  emerges  in  the  region  of  mere  beauty 
and  delight,  and  sings,  not  the  epic  of  action,  but  the 
lyric  of  feeling.  Once,  indeed,  in  the  climax  of  the 
garden  of  Armida,  the  highest  point  of  the  mood  is 
frankly  given  in  a  song.  With  all  his  epical  dexterity, 


274  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

Tasso  is  primarily  lyrical  by  genius,  and  his  love  of 
landscape,  music,  and  the  emotional  disburdening  of  his 
spirit  are  forms  of  his  lyricism.  Beauty,  grace,  kind 
ness,  gentleness,  nobility,  are  the  things  he  loved  and 
responded  to,  and  rather  with  a  lament  than  with  a 
pean.  For  the  scene  of  life  is  presented  with  vigor  in 
the  action,  it  is  true,  by  an  intellectual  tour  de  force  in 
description,  of  which  he  had  learned  the  art  from  books 
such  as  Homer;  but  the  scene  of  life  is  also  and  more 
markedly  represented  with  great  melancholy  in  the 
thought  and  after-issue  of  the  action,  with  unceasing  and 
irrepressible  sadness.  The  history  of  love  in  the  poem 
is  nowhere  a  happy  history,  and  Tasso  pleaded  this  fact 
in  his  strife  with  the  ecclesiastics  who  disapproved  of 
these  scenes.  The  whole  field  of  life  here  represented 
is  one  of  sorrow  and  death  —  the  woes  of  men;  but  the 
great  test  of  the  militant  spirit  of  life  —  delight  in  vic 
tory —  is  strangely  absent.  There  is  no  joy  of  victory 
anywhere  in  the  poem.  Though  Jerusalem  falls,  and  the 
knights  enter  in  triumph,  this  seems  a  very  unimportant 
incident  at  the  end,  and  merely  winds  up  the  poem.  The 
poem  is  really  done,  when  we  know  the  fate  of  the  lovers 
in  it. 

So  far  from  victory  felt  in  the  poem,  it  is  the  sense  of 
the  difficulty  of  life,  of  the  thwarting  of  life,  of  its  sad 
fates  —  the  sense,  hi  a  word,  of  the  unaccomplished  — 
that  most  remains  with  the  reader.  The  feeling  of  the 
inexpressible  —  the  non  so  die  of  his  favorite  phrase  — 
is  one  with  the  feeling  of  the  unattained.  Tasso's  view 
of  life  thus  ends  not  in  action,  but  in  an  attitude  toward 
life,  a  certain  cast  of  thought  and  habit  of  emotion.  It 
is  not  merely  that  action  is  not  the  true  subject  and 
interest  of  the  poem;  but  rather  emotion  divorced  from 


TASSO  275 

action,  pure  emotion;  mere  feeling  in  its  own  realm  is 
the  characteristic  trait  and  charm  of  this  verse;  and 
therein  lies  Tasso's  original  genius  as  distinct  from  all 
that  he  inherited  from  the  old  masters.  He  was  an 
extremely  sensitive  poet,  with  an  excitable  imagination 
cultivated  in  its  exercise  by  the  most  highly  developed 
artistic  tradition,  not  only  in  poetry  but  in  all  the  arts; 
but  from  his  precocious  adolescence  to  the  close  of  his 
career,  he  was  brought  in  contact  with  real  life  only 
in  the  sphere  of  the  sentiments,  and  for  the  most  part  only 
in  the  region  of  an  ideal  love  for  the  Lady  Leonora.  His 
touch  on  life  had  been  almost  exclusively  through  the 
imagination,  and  his  pleasures  and  sorrows  had  been  in 
that  realm,  in  a  true  sense.  No  wonder  he  became  vis- 
T'onary  even  to  the  point  of  mental  disease,  that  is,  of 
hallucination;  but  in  the  sphere  outside  of  hallucina 
tion  his  ordinary  daily  life  was  still  imaginative.  It 
was  natural  that  there  should  grow  up  in  such  a  genius 
a  prepossession  for  emotional  states  little  related  to 
action,  a  love  for  emotion  just  for  its  own  sake,  as  if  it 
were  the  effect  of  a  drug. 

The  point  of  culture  he  marks  lies,  thus,  in  emotional 
ism  toward  beauty  and  joy,  sensuously  felt  through  their 
charm,  but  becoming  an  end  in  itself  for  the  sake  of  the 
emotion  only.  This  is  the  secret  of  his  love  of  music, 
for  it  is  in  music  that  emotion  is  most  freely  experienced 
in  this  pure  form  disjoined  from  action.  In  his  poetry 
art  is  seen  on  the  way  to  music,  and  his  lyrical  passion 
is  the  intermediate  stage.  It  is  historically  plain,  be 
cause  his  pastoral  drama  "Aminta,"  in  which  these  quali 
ties  I  have  dwelt  on  are  shown  free  from  any  epic 
entanglement,  was  the  beginning  of  pastoral  drama  in 
Italy  —  that  is,  it  ushered  in  Italian  opera.  Tasso,  by 


276  THE   INSPIRATION   OF    POETRY 

virtue  of  this  possession  of  his  genius  by  emotion  for  its 
own  sake,  is  the  forerunner  and  prophet  of  the  age  of 
music  soon  to  dawn  after  him,  and  in  the  coming  of 
which  he  assisted. 

You  will  observe  that  Tasso  exemplifies  with  singular 
precision  the  main  principles  that  were  laid  down  with 
respect  to  the  general  nature  of  poetic  energy.  Though 
he  was  a  scholar  from  boyhood  and  steeped  in  the  aca 
demic  learning  of  his  time,  and  master  of  the  earlier 
tradition  of  literature  ancient  and  modern,  and  was  so 
expert  with  his  mind  that  he  could,  like  Pope,  compose 
in  his  teens  a  work  seemingly  mature  and  excellent 
enough  to  make  him  at  once,  like  Byron,  and  younger 
than  Byron,  the  best  poet  of  his  time,  nevertheless,  it 
was  not  by  this  weight  and  compass  of  learning  nor  by 
anything  intellectual  that  his  genius  succeeded;  but  it 
was  by  his  power  of  emotion.  Emotion  is  found  to  be, 
in  a  singularly  pure  form,  the  substance  of  his  epic,  its 
center  of  interest,  its  core  from  which  its  power  radiates. 
Secondly,  though  by  the  traits  of  his  epic,  its  classical 
and  romantic  handling,  its  relation  to  luxury  and  the 
arts,  its  piety,  and  much  else  both  in  structure  and  de 
tail,  he  belongs  to  the  Renaissance,  and  the  great  emo 
tional  upheaval  due  to  that  rebirth  of  the  soul  and  senses 
of  man,  and  is  in  fact  the  last  child  of  that  age  in  his 
own  land,  and  hence  is  to  be  counted  in  that  group, 
nevertheless,  he  is  also  a  forward-looking  man,  and  an 
nounces  the  new  and  approaching  age  of  music.  In  the 
most  intimate  and  personal  part  of  his  genius  he  deals 
with  emotion  as  it  is  under  the  condition  of  music,  and 
attempts  in  poetry  the  characteristic  effects  of  music, 
endeavoring  to  realize  emotion  for  its  own  sake.  He  is 
thus  in  his  genius  prescient  of  the  change  of  the  mood 


TASSO  277 

in  the  race,  and  attaches  himself  to  a  modern  time  by 
the  link  of  the  opera  and  by  the  use  of  his  imagination, 
specially  in  the  highly  artificial  forms  of  the  pastoral  and 
of  magic;  that  is,  he  frees  himself  as  much  as  possible 
from  realism  in  the  scene,  and  disengages  emotion  from 
actuality  in  the  manner  of  the  opera.  It  is  unfortunate 
for  his  fame  that  he  thus  stood,  as  it  were,  between  two 
arts,  poetry  and  music.  Among  epic  poets,  he  professed 
to  fear  only  Camoens,  of  his  contemporaries;  his  inferi 
ority  to  the  greatest,  such  as  Homer  and  Virgil,  is  ob 
vious,  and  in  majesty  he  falls  short  compared  with  Mil 
ton;  he  cannot  be  ranked  among  the  greatest  poets  in 
epic  verse.  The  reason  appears  to  be  that  in  his  martial 
verse  he  follows  a  literary  tradition  and  is  at  best  doing 
by  main  force  what  others  had  done;  while  in  his  emo 
tional  verse  he  is  experimenting  in  a  kind  of  art  which 
reaches  perfection  rather  in  music  than  in  poetry.  He 
was  too  late  for  martial  epic;  he  was  too  early  for  musi 
cal  emotion;  but  his  genius  foreknows  the  moods  of 
music.  Thirdly,  his  genius  is  greatest  and  most  effi 
cient  in  proportion  as  it  is  unconscious  of  itself  in  its 
art.  That  part  of  his  work  which  was  intellectually  and 
consciously  determined  was  the  martial  part,  the  struc 
ture  of  the  action  and  placing  of  the  episodes,  the  imi 
tations  of  his  predecessors  —  all,  in  brief,  that  he  derived 
from  the  classical  and  romantic  tradition,  from  books. 
If  he  had  done  only  this,  he  would  have  written  only  a 
respectable  poem,  like  a  hundred  others,  which  would 
have  soon  been  forgotten  or  listed  only  in  the  history 
of  his  country's  literature.  What  he  added  out  of  his 
own  heart  —  the  poetry  of  love  ensphered  in  landscape, 
melody,  pathos,  sentiment,  sensuousness  —  and  seized 
most  intimately  and  passionately  in  the  form  of  an 


278  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

inexpressible  longing  without  issue  —  all  this  was  the 
flowering  of  the  unconscious,  the  original  part  of  him  — 
that  which  was  least  indebted  for  subject  or  method  to 
other  men  and  former  poets.  The  primacy  of  emotion, 
the  prescience  of  the  future,  the  guiding  and  prevailing 
power  of  the  unconscious  element  in  his  genius  are 
clearly  seen. 

The  characteristic  marks  are  just  as  plainly  to  be 
seen  in  his  personal  temperament  and  worldly  fortunes. 
A  precocious  boy,  he  had  extraordinary  sensitiveness  and 
extraordinary  creative  faculty,  and  under  the  excitement 
of  a  fevered  and  unhappy  life  his  senses  blended  with 
his  creative  faculty  and  made  him  a  visionary  —  the 
victim  of  his  faculties.  He  was  a  courtier  and  a  scholar, 
and  both  are  careers  naturally  subject  to  annoying  jeal 
ousies,  to  envy  and  detraction  and  intrigue;  he  had  no 
power  of  wise  conduct  in  unhappy  circumstances,  and 
his  long  and  miserable  imprisonment  in  the  flower  of  his 
manhood  was  the  result;  yet  in  his  life  he  was  much 
honored  and  befriended  in  general;  his  fame,  which  he 
highly  valued,  was  always  a  solace  to  him.  Looking 
beneath  the  obvious  facts,  however,  it  appears  to  me 
that  one  reads  an  old  and  familiar  tragedy  of  life.  He 
was  from  birth  a  man  framed  for  the  natural  enjoyment 
of  life,  and  especially  for  its  esthetic  enjoyment;  he  was 
a  man  to  whom  beauty  and  delight  appealed  in  the  most 
noble,  sweet,  and  penetrating  way,  and  his  original  sensi 
tiveness  was  developed  to  the  full  by  high  cultivation. 
Two  barriers,  nevertheless,  rose  between  him  and  life. 
He  loved  a  princess,  not  of  his  own  world,  and  conse 
quently  he  was  filled  with  that  ideal  passion  which  is 
the  tradition  of  Italian  poetry  and  which  is  full  of  senti 
ment,  of  unrealized  emotion.  Secondly,  he  was  trained 


TASSO  279 

<* 

by  the  Jesuit  fathers,  in  charge  of  his  boyhood,  to  an 
ascetic  habit  and  view,  and  to  a  fear  of  displeasing 
heaven;  and,  as  time  went  on,  this  element  in  him,  which 
always  fought  with  his  poetic  impulses  and  power,  made 
him  cancel  the  best  of  his  verse.  In  these  two  ways  his 
natural  enjoyment  of  life  was  blocked.  He  responded 
to  the  call  of  life  with  his  senses  and  imagination;  we 
read  his  true  nature,  in  this  way,  by  the  charm  of  the 
things  he  loved.  Yet,  under  the  conditions,  it  is  not 
strange  that  the  main  impression  left  by  his  poetry  is 
that  here  is  written  the  despair  of  a  heart  in  love  with 
life.  It  is  this  despair  that  gives  such  poignancy  to  his 
pathos,  such  melancholy  to  the  verse,  and  such  yearning 
force  to  his  lyrical  cry  of  the  beauty,  the  joy,  and  the 
extinction  of  life. 


VII 
LUCRETIUS 

LAST  year,  in  my  wanderings  through  Sicily,  I  came 
to  the  old  town  that  was  once  Acragas,  and  I  had  the 
happiness  to  abide  there  quietly  for  a  while,  where  so 
long  ago  between  the  sea  and  the  mountains  stood  what 
Pindar  called  "the  most  beautiful  city  of  mortals."  I 
remember  I  would  go  down  to  the  ruins,  where,  in  the 
midst  of  immense  broken  columns,  lay  on  the  ground 
a  great  stone  figure  of  a  Titan,  with  his  face  looking  to 
the  broad,  empty  blue  sky;  and  it  seemed  to  me  like  an 
unwritten  poem  of  Victor  Hugo,  as  if  the  Titan  in  a  sort 
of  triumph  lay  there  on  his  back  in  the  center  of  the 
fallen  temple  of  Zeus,  his  foe  and  oppressor,  and  looked 
up  with  a  stony,  sardonic  satisfaction  into  the  now  throne- 
less  ether.  It  was  a  Mediterranean  mood.  And  often, 
wandering  about  through  the  region,  I  remembered  that 
sage  of  antiquity,  who  is  to  us  hardly  more  than  a  sound 
ing  name,  Empedocles  —  about  whom  you  may  recall 
Arnold  wrote  a  poem  "Empedocles  on  Etna"  —  who  was 
for  all  time  the  chief  glory  of  Acragas.  He  was  a  poet 
and  priest,  a  man  of  science  and  affairs;  even  —  as  he 
said  —  powerful  in  magic,  almost  with  divine  power,  so 
excelling  both  to  himself  and  the  citizens  seemed  his 
faculty.  He  occupied  himself  with  great  works  of 
public  utility,  using  novel  means;  he  opened  a  path  for 
the  north  wind  through  the  hills  in  order  to  shield  the 
city  from  the  heats  of  summer;  he  turned  the  bed  of  a 

281 


282  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

river,  and  poured  it  through  a  vast  marsh  and  so  drove 
the  pestilence  away  forever;  he  raised  a  woman  from 
seeming  death  by  his  medicinal  art;  and  it  is  little  won 
der,  in  those  days,  that  when  he  came  forth,  being  a 
noble  of  the  state,  tall,  clad  in  purple  robes  and  with  long 
streaming  hair,  and  walking  in  golden  sandals,  attended 
by  his  retinue  of  followers,  the  people  saluted  him  with 
such  reverence  as  is  akin  to  religious  awe;  such  honor, 
let  us  say,  as  was  paid  to  holy  men  in  medieval  cities. 
Often  I  thought  of  him,  and  wondered  how  it  could  have 
been  —  so  impossible  and  remote  seemed  the  picture  in 
the  denuded  plain;  and  I  remembered  the  words  of 
Lucretius,  whose  enthusiasm  for  great  minds  is  one  of 
his  engaging  qualities,  in  which  he  laid  his  laurel  on 
the  memory  of  Empedocles,  whose  genius  was  kindred 
to  his  own:  — 

"Him  within  the  three-cornered  shores  of  its  lands 
that  island  bore,  about  which  the  Ionian  sea  flows  in 
large  cranklings,  and  splashes  up  brine  from  its  green 
waves.  Here  the  sea  racing  in  its  straitened  firth, 
divides  by  its  waters  the  shores  of  Italians  lands  from 
the  other's  coasts;  here  is  wasteful  Charybdis,  and  here 
the  rumblings  of  Etna.  .  .  .  Now,  though  this  great 
country  is  seen  to  deserve  in  many  ways  the  wonder  of 
mankind  and  is  held  to  be  well  worth  visiting,  rich  in 
all  good  things,  guarded  by  large  force  of  men,  yet  seems 
it  to  have  held  within  it  nothing  more  glorious  than  this 
man." 

With  the  same  lonely  grandeur  that  Empedocles  bore 
to  Lucretius,  with  the  same  solitary  preeminence,  Lucre 
tius  stands  forth  to  my  eyes  from  Roman  time,  which 
"seems  to  have  held  within  it  nothing  more  glorious  than 
this  man."  I  may  not  be  able  to  carry  you  along  with 


LUCRETIUS  283 

<* 

me  in  this  enthusiasm;  for  the  subject  is  difficult,  the 
matter  of  his  poem  is  hard  and  dry,  unintelligible  indeed 
to  a  modern  reader  without  special  preparation  to  under 
stand  it;  and  yet,  though  time  has  thus  petrified  large 
portions  of  it,  the  poem  burns  with  a  far  deeper  vigor 
than  flows  in  the  poets  whose  fiery  genius  I  have  hitherto 
tried  to  interpret  to  you.  It  is  the  passion  not  of  the 
blood,  but  of  the  mind;  not  for  a  nation's  glory  like 
Camoens,  but  for  the  welfare  of  man's  race;  not  issuing 
in  despair  like  Byron  and  Tasso,  but  in  the  control  of 
life.  It  is  the  intellectual  passion  to  serve  mankind  in 
the  ways  of  knowledge. 

Just  as  poetic  genius  is  often  a  double  star  —  as 
Shakespeare  was  both  poet  and  dramatist,  and  as  Plato 
was  both  poet  and  philosopher,  and  the  poetic  element 
was  primary  in  both  of  them  —  so  Lucretius  was  a  poet 
and  a  man  of  science,  and  the  poetic  element  was 
primary  in  him.  The  subject  matter  of  his  work  is 
science,  a  theory  of  physics,  explanations  of  natural  phe 
nomena,  astromony  —  that  is,  the  science  of  the  ancient 
world.  For  the  most  part,  as  science,  it  is  in  matters 
of  detail  now  merely  curious  reading,  useful  in  reminding 
us  that  science  as  well  as  religion  has  a  history  of  early 
fables  and  a  past  littered  with  errors;  but  that  is  all. 
Personally,  I  find  something  refreshing  in  coming  in 
contact  with  this  childhood  of  science,  just  as  one  finds 
it  in  those  passages  of  Plato  where  he  treats  incidentally 
of  similar  subjects;  and  it  makes  for  intellectual  modesty, 
when  one  comes  upon  these  provinces  of  ignorance  in 
the  serious  works  of  the  great,  for  even  in  our  own  cul 
ture  may  there  not  be  just  such  childhood  tracts,  as  they 
will  seem  hereafter?  But  a  better  reason  why  the  old 
sages  of  Greece,  like  Empedocles,  interest  me  is  that 


284  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

there  I  feel  myself,  more  clearly  than  elsewhere,  at  the 
very  birth  of  that  Greek  reason,  in  whose  advent  lay,  as 
it  seems  to  me  —  I  do  not  say  eternal  salvation  —  but 
the  salvation  of  our  race  here  on  earth.  I  like  to  read 
such  passages  of  these  old  poems  as  express  man's  first 
sense,  not  of  the  difficulty  of  virtue,  but  of  the  quite  as 
important  difficulty  of  knowledge.  It  sometimes  seems 
to  us  that  the  early  Greek  sages  were  overweening  — 
indeed  the  very  types  of  omniscient  self-conceit;  but 
this  is  partly  because  of  the  universality  of  their  theories, 
and  partly  it  is  the  after-effect  of  Socrates'  sarcasm  upon 
our  minds.  Hear  what  Empedocles  said,  four  centuries 
before  Lucretius:  — 

"Weak  and  narrow  are  the  powers  implanted  in  the 
limbs  of  men;  many  the  woes  that  fall  on  them  and 
blunt  the  edge  of  thought;  short  is  the  measure  of  the 
life  in  death  through  which  they  toil;  then  are  they 
borne  away,  like  smoke  they  vanish  into  air,  and  what 
they  dream  they  know  is  but  the  little  each  hath  stumbled 
on,  in  wandering  about  the  world.  Yet  boast  they  all 
that  they  have  learned  the  whole  —  vain  fools!  for  what 
that  is  no  eye  hath  seen,  no  ear  hath  heard,  nor  can  it 
be  conceived  by  mind  of  man.  Thou,  then,  since  thou 
hast  fallen  to  this  place,  shalt  know  no  more  than  human 
wisdom  may  attain." 

Lucretius,  however,  is  little  embarrassed  by  any  doubts 
of  the  amount  and  kind  of  his  knowledge;  and  as  one 
reads  his  explanation  of  specific  natural  phenomena,  given 
out  with  such  assurance,  one  is  reminded  of  that  tone 
of  knowingness  still  familiar  to  us  in  the  eager  and  plaus 
ible  scientist.  But  to  leave  on  one  side  this  detail, 
which  is  as  compact  of  error  as  the  lives  of  the  saints, 
there  are  certain  conceptions  and  ideas  of  a  more  favor- 


LUCRETIUS  285 

able  and  just  notion  of  Lucretius'  true  attainment  in  a 
scientific  grasp  of  the  world.  These  ideas  are  simple 
and  few;  but  to  estimate  them  justly  it  must  be  remem 
bered  on  what  a  background  they  are  relieved,  how 
recent  was  any  natural  knowledge,  how  close  was  the 
world  of  primitive  mind,  how  small  that  world  was, 
how  near  the  gods  were  in  it,  scarce  a  hand-breadth  off 
—  how  Lucretius  himself  lived  in  a  Mediterranean  world 
seething  with  idolatries;  it  is  against  the  barbarian  in 
heritance  of  paganism,  against  its  Egyptian  mysticism, 
its  magical  practices,  its  long-consecrated  ceremonial 
rites  —  in  a  word,  against  the  pagan  attitude  to  nature 
that  these  ideas  stand  forth;  and  in  them  slowly  forming 
was  the  creation  of  a  new  world,  the  world  of  thought 
in  which  we  now  live. 

In  the  first  place,  in  room  of  that  small  Olympian  or 
Nilotic  world  where  the  gods  were  near,  he  conceived  of 
infinite  space,  thronged  with  systems  of  worlds,  uni 
verses  like  our  own.  It  is  hard  for  us  to  think  rightly 
of  the  sequent  steps  of  man's  progress,  to  realize,  for 
example,  the  epoch-making  change  of  such  a  thing  as  the 
discovery  of  the  ways  to  work  metals,  or  of  cultiva 
tion  of  the  olive  and  of  corn,  or  of  the  alphabet.  Now 
we  think  of  the  epoch  of  the  expansion  of  the  mind  as 
being  coincident,  say,  with  the  substitution  of  Coperni- 
can  for  Ptolemaic  astronomy;  but  when  the  idea  of  infi 
nite  space  was  first  intelligently  conceived  so  that  the 
man  knew  what  he  was  thinking,  that  was  the  moment 
of  expansion  to  which  all  others  are  dwindling  points; 
that  was  a  sublime  moment  in  the  history  of  man's  mind, 
though  since  such  knowledge  was  not  so  readily  transmis 
sible  as  a  material  discovery,  like  the  culture  of  corn, 
the  effects  of  the  act  are  more  slowly  apparent.  The 


286  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

thought  of  infinity  was  old  when  Lucretius  received  it; 
but  it  must  not  be  considered  that  the  infinity  of  the 
universe  was  the  same  to  him  as  to  us.  He  believed,  for 
example,  that  the  sun  and  moon  and  stars  actually  are 
of  the  size  that  they  appear  to  us  to  be;  and  he  filled 
space  with  systems  conceived  on  that  pattern.  Never 
theless,  he  had  acquired  for  his  thought  a  scale  of  infinity; 
and  it  gave  to  his  conception  of  things  a  sublimity  not 
unlike  that  which  the  same  scale  gives  Milton  in  "Para 
dise  Lost." 

Secondly,  he  conceived  of  nature  as  an  energy  exist 
ing  in  this  infinite,  and  infinite  itself;  and  in  the  analysis 
of  energy  he  found  the  other  pole  of  thought,  the  infin 
itesimal,  the  atomic;  for  all  matter  is  composed  of  the 
atoms,  infinite  in  number,  and  themselves  imperceptible 
to  the  senses.  In  other  words,  he  conceived  of  nature, 
on  modern  lines,  as  an  unseen  energy  —  the  unseen  uni 
verse,  as  we  sometimes  call  it  —  the  microscopic,  the 
molecular,  the  ethereal  wave  of  force,  however  consti 
tuted,  which  is  invisible,  but  out  of  which  in  combi 
nation  the  visible  world  of  nature  emerges  to  our  gross 
senses.  The  world  of  nature  was  thus  to  him,  essen 
tially,  a  world  of  the  mind's  eye;  the  veil  of  sense  had 
fallen,  and  he  saw  what  was  behind.  This  theory  he 
derived,  as  he  did  all  his  knowledge,  from  the  Greeks, 
those  few  lonely  thinkers  who  were  the  light  of  that 
early  world.  The  idea  itself,  however,  was  a  great 
achievement  of  thought,  and  one  of  the  most  fruitful 
legacies  that  the  antique  world  transmitted  to  us. 

Thirdly,  he  conceived  of  energy  as  organized;  the 
atoms  were  different  in  kind,  and  limited  in  the  number 
of  kinds,  and  by  their  combination  formed  various  species 
of  things,  as  we  may  call  them,  and  these  species  were 


LUCRETIUS  287 

fixed,  so  that  a  certain  combination  produced  one  spe 
cies  only,  and  if  that  species  had  in  itself  the  power  of 
reproduction,  it  reproduced  only  its  own  species.  Every 
thing  thus,  he  said,  has  "its  limit  and  deepset  boundary 
mark."  This  clearly  is  nature  organized.  Fourthly, 
he  conceived  of  energy  as  a  flux,  an  element  of  change, 
an  incessant  action  and  transformation  of  the  atomic 
groups  dissolving  and  recombining,  which  is  the  process 
of  nature.  Fifthly,  he  conceived  of  energy  as  perfectly 
conserved  in  this  process;  there  is  neither  loss  nor  addi 
tion;  the  sum  remains  always  constant.  Sixthly,  he  con 
ceived  of  energy  as  absolutely  law-abiding,  subject 
neither  to  interference  nor  caprice  nor  default,  unchange 
able  hi  its  certainty.  It  is,  perhaps,  by  the  strength  with 
which  he  grasped  this  idea  of  the  invariable  order  of 
natural  law  that  he  most  affects  the  admiration  of  modern 
times,  partly  because  of  the  intensity  of  feeling  with 
which  he  clings  to  it;  it  is  the  anchor  of  his  faith.  To 
sum  it  up,  Lucretius  conceived  nature  as  an  unseen,  or 
ganizing,  ceaselessly  active,  perfectly  conserved,  and  law- 
abiding  energy,  working  in  infinite  space  and  itself  infi 
nite.  This  is  not  unlike  the  scientific  idea  that  we  know. 
To  turn  to  the  history  of  the  universe,  it  appeared 
to  Lucretius  that  in  the  ceaseless  action  of  infinite  atoms 
in  infinite  space  sooner  or  later  there  would  arise  the 
particular  combination  from  which  the  world  phenomena 
known  to  man  followed.  He  did  not  believe  that  the 
world  was  very  old,  and  he  thought  the  history  of  man 
quite  recent.  There  is  in  his  physical  theory  a  rude  doc 
trine  of  evolution,  of  the  centering  of  the  sun  and  moon 
and  the  solidifying  of  the  earth;  and  man  arising  out  of 
nature,  with  other  species  of  things,  was  half-beast,  savage 
and  rough  and  pitiable,  and  was  gradually  by  his  own 


288  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

efforts  civilized.  He  notices  the  extinction  of  species  in  the 
conflict  for  life,  and  he  assigns  to  the  softening  influence 
of  children  a  great  share  in  raising  man  from  the  savage 
and  brutal  state.  Some  of  you  may  remember  that  John 
Fiske  was  believed  to  have  added  an  original  contribu 
tion  to  the  doctrine  of  evolution  by  the  influence  he 
assigned  to  the  prolongation  of  the  period  of  infancy. 
It  is  a  curious  parallel.  But  it  is  enough  to  say  that  in 
his  theory  of  the  origin  of  civilization,  language,  the  arts, 
and  all  that  concerns  the  primitive  history  of  mankind, 
Lucretius  is  quite  in  harmony  with  modern  thought, 
even  to  the  analysis  of  the  influence  of  dreams  hi  gen 
erating  some  important  human  conceptions  with  regard 
to  the  soul.  As  he  thought  that  the  life  of  mankind  and 
of  our  universe  had  not  been  long,  he  also  believed  that 
the  world  had  grown,  even  in  that  time,  old,  and  was 
losing  its  strength;  his  mind  was  prepossessed  with  the 
idea  of  the  dissolution  of  things  as  the  natural  term  of  all 
combinations  of  atoms,  and  it  is  a  curious  sign  of  the 
sense  of  insecurity  then  belonging  to  the  human  mind 
to  find  him  thinking  that  the  world  as  we  know  it  would 
end  in  a  catastrophe,  which  he  apparently  anticipated  as 
likely  to  occur  at  any  moment,  when  the  frame  of  things 
should  fall  in  and  the  atomic  storm  fly  dispersed  abroad. 
Such  in  brief  is  the  view  of  the  world  which  Lucretius 
presents. 

It  is  not,  however,  the  science  of  Lucretius  that  inter 
ests  me;  it  is  incidental  to  my  main  purpose,  which  is 
rather  to  set  forth  the  poet.  Yet  it  was  science  which 
gave  to  Lucretius  the  ample  career  of  his  mind.  He  was 
excited  and  enfranchised  by  it,  and  in  these  ideas  he 
seemed  to  have  received,  as  it  were,  the  freedom  of  the 
universe,  to  go  fearless  and  unquestioned  where  he  would, 


LUCRETIUS  289 

9 

as  he  describes  his  master,  Epicurus,  who,  he  says, 
"traversed  throughout  in  mind  and  spirit  the  immeas 
urable  universe,  whence  he  returns  a  conqueror  to  tell 
us  what  can,  what  cannot  come  into  being  —  on  what 
principle  each  thing  has  its  powers  denned,  its  deep- 
set  boundary  mark."  Lucretius  had  reached  in  these 
conceptions  the  seats  of  the  wise,  which  he  describes  in 
a  famous  passage:  — 

"It  is  sweet,  when  on  the  great  sea  the  winds  trouble 
its  waters,  to  behold  from  land  another's  deep  distress; 
not  that  it  is  a  pleasure  and  delight  that  any  should  be 
afflicted,  but  because  it  is  sweet  to  see  from  what  evils 
you  are  yourself  exempt.  It  is  sweet  also  to  look  upon 
the  mighty  struggles  of  war  arrayed  along  the  plains 
without  sharing  yourself  in  the  danger.  But  nothing 
is  more  welcome  than  to  hold  the  lofty  and  serene  posi 
tions  well  fortified  by  the  learning  of  the  wise,  from  which 
you  may  look  down  upon  others  and  see  them  wandering 
all  abroad  and  going  astray  in  their  search  for  the  path 
of  life,  see  the  contest  among  them  of  intellect,  the  rivalry 
of  birth,  the  striving  night  and  day  with  surpassing  effort 
to  struggle  up  to  the  summit  of  power  and  be  masters  of 
the  world.  O  miserable  minds  of  men!  O  blinded 
breasts!" 

It  is  from  such  a  height  that  Lucretius  is  always  seen 
looking  down.  For  he  had  about  him  the  horizons  and 
perspectives  of  a  new  world.  In  another  famous  and 
peculiarly  Roman  passage  he  says:  "When  mighty 
legions  fill  the  plain  with  their  rapid  movement,  raising 
the  pageantry  of  warfare,  the  splendor  rises  up  to  heaven, 
and  all  the  land  about  is  bright  with  the  glitter  of  brass, 
and  beneath  from  the  mighty  host  of  men  the  sound  of 
their  tramp  arises,  and  the  mountains,  struck  by  their 


2QO  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

shouting,  reecho  their  voices  to  the  stars  of  heaven,  and 
the  horsemen  hurry  to  and  fro  on  either  flank  and  sud 
denly  charge  across  the  plains,  shaking  them  with  their 

impetuous  onset And  yet  there  is  some  place 

in  the  lofty  mountains  whence  they  appear  to  be  all  still, 
and  to  rest  as  a  bright  gleam  upon  the  plains." 

This  is  the  new  perspective  from  which  Lucretius  looks 
on  human  life.  He  was  the  only  Roman  who  transcended 
Rome.  He  sees  Rome  itself  as  but  one  of  the  swift 
runners  who  hand  on  in  turn  the  torch  of  life  among  the 
nations.  He  was  a  Roman,  and  of  an  ancient  house; 
but  he  despised  alike  imperial  power  and  vastness  of 
wealth.  Rome  spread  material  dominion  over  the  earth, 
but  he  saw  only  the  dominion  of  the  mind  as  a  thing 
worthy  of  man's  dignity.  Rome  subjected  men  in  their 
bodies,  but  his  passion  was  to  enfranchise  the  souls  of 
men  and  bring  them  to  a  birth  of  freedom.  For  Lucre 
tius  was  deeply  endowed  with  that  social  sympathy  which 
belongs  to  poetry  by  its  own  nature,  as  I  have  said;  and 
the  main  motive  of  his  poem  was  not  knowledge,  not  the 
scholar's  motive,  but  was  service,  the  poet's  function. 
It  was  not  for  science  that  he  deeply  cared,  but  for  its 
effects  on  the  minds  of  men. 

He  looked  abroad  over  human  life,  and  he  often  depicts 
it  in  the  large;  he  sees  it  without  a  veil  and  tells  it  with 
out  a  lie;  there  is  no  golden  age  in  man's  past  for  him  — 
only  the  bestial  misery  and  blood-stained  cruelty  of 
savage  life  from  which  man  rises  with  vast  effort  and 
suffering;  or,  he  shows,  as  at  the  end  of  the  poem,  the 
plague  at  Athens,  a  terrible  scene  of  human  wretched 
ness;  or,  he  singles  out  of  the  high  luxurious  life  of  the 
age  the  Roman  noble  —  "driving  his  horses,  he  speeds 
in  hot  haste  to  his  country  house,  as  if  his  house  were  on 


LUCRETIUS  291 

fire  and  he  was  hurrying  to  bring  assistance.  Straight 
way  he  begins  to  yawn,  so  soon  as  he  has  reached  his 
threshold,  or  sinks  heavily  into  sleep,  or  even  with  all 
haste  returns  to  the  city."  It  is  the  picture  of  speeding 
wealth  in  our  own  day.  Lucretius  renders  life  as  he 
sees  it,  in  its  past  and  present;  and  his  words  are  blended 
of  irony,  reproof,  and  sorrow.  He  had  broad  and  natural 
sympathies;  and  his  sympathy,  though  not  lacking  in 
individual  touches,  is  nevertheless  mainly  impersonal  and 
racial;  it  is  for  the  race  rather  than  the  man  that  he  has 
pity  and  commiseration.  That  is  why  he  wrote  his  poem 
of  which  the  aim  is  not  scientific  but  philanthropic.  He 
saw  mankind  under  the  yoke  of  superstition;  the  critics 
say  that  he  exaggerated  the  terrors  of  the  supernatural, 
which  did  not  so  afflict  men  in  paganism.  I  am  not 
competent  to  gainsay  their  opinion,  yet  my  own  mind 
refuses  to  see  the  Mediterranean  world  of  those  ages 
other  than  as  he  described  it  —  permeated  with  supersti 
tious  fear  and  barren  pagan  practices  through  all  its 
million-peopled  coasts;  so,  at  any  rate,  it  seemed  to  him, 
and  he  lifted  his  hand  to  wither  this  immeasurable  evil, 
the  chief  and  fruitful  source  of  men's  woes,  at  the  root. 
It  is  at  superstition,  as  at  the  old  dragon,  that  every 
glittering  shaft  of  reason  is  shot  in  these  golden  lines. 

Lucretius  identified  all  religion  with  superstition,  and 
meant  to  uproot  it  from  the  minds  of  men  and  entirely 
eradicate  it.  He  opposed  in  sharp  contrast  the  pagan 
view  of  the  world,  under  which  man  and  nature  were  the 
sport  of  the  gods,  and  the  view  of  Greek  reason  in  which 
the  divine  element  in  every  form  was  excluded  both  from 
nature  and  human  life.  The  state  of  man  as  Lucretius 
saw  it,  under  paganism,  was  one  of  servitude  to  fear; 
under  this  idea  of  the  Greek  reason  it  was  one  of  free- 


292  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

dom,  of  dignity,  and  its  worst  estate  one  of  noble  forti 
tude  and  self-respect.  He  desired  to  establish  this  reign 
of  reason,  in  place  of  paganism,  and  to  follow  in  the  foot 
steps  of  his  master,  Epicurus,  who  had  opened  the  way 
and  brought  this  light  into  the  world.  At  the  outset  of 
his  poem  he  describes  this  achievement  of  Epicurus  and 
what  it  meant  for  mankind:  — 

"When  human  life  lay  foully  prostrate  upon  earth, 
crushed  down  under  the  weight  of  religion,  who  showed 
her  head  from  the  quarters  of  heaven  with  hideous  aspect 
lowering  upon  mortals,  a  man  of  Greece  ventured  first 
to  lift  up  his  mortal  eyes  to  her  face  and  first  to  with 
stand  her  to  her  face.  Him  neither  story  of  gods  nor 
thunderbolts  nor  heaven  with  threatening  roar  could 
quell;  they  only  chafed  the  more  the  eager  courage  of 
his  soul,  filling  him  with  desire  to  be  the  first  to  burst 
the  fast  bars  of  nature's  portals.  Therefore  the  living 
force  of  his  soul  gained  the  day;  on  he  passed  far  be 
yond  the  flaming  walls  of  the  world  and  traversed 
throughout,  in  mind  and  spirit,  the  immeasurable  uni 
verse.  ...  Us  his  victory  brings  level  with  heaven." 

It  is  always  a  great  moment  when  mankind  looks  at 
its  gods  with  level  eyes;  and,  in  this  case,  the  gods 
seemed  to  Lucretius  to  vanish  and  remove  far  away. 
He  believed  that  these  gods  that  men  worshipped  with 
altars  and  sacred  rites  over  the  whole  earth,  and  honored 
with  festal  days,  were  the  coinage  of  man's  brain,  and 
man  had  placed  them  in  heaven  and  given  them  charge 
of  all  things:  — 

"O  hapless  race  of  men,  when  that  they  charged  the 
gods  with  such  acts,  and  coupled  with  them  bitter  wrath! 
what  groanings  did  they  then  beget  for  themselves,  what 
wounds  for  us,  what  tears  for  our  children's  children! 


LUCRETIUS  293 

<* 

No  act  is  it  of  piety  to  be  often  seen  with  veiled  head 
to  turn  to  a  stone  and  approach  every  altar  and  fall 
prostrate  on  the  ground  and  spread  out  the  palms  before 
the  statues  of  the  gods  and  sprinkle  the  altars  with  much 
blood  of  beasts  and  link  vow  on  vow,  but  rather  to  be 
able  to  look  on  all  things  with  a  mind  of  peace." 

Nor,  says  Lucretius,  in  his  opening  lines,  should  any 
fear  that  the  ground  of  reason  is  unholy  and  her  path 
the  path  of  sin;  rather  it  is  religion  that  is  sinful.  And 
he  goes  on  to  draw  that  picture  of  the  human  sacrifice 
of  Iphigeneia  by  Agamemnon,  her  father,  when  the  Greek 
ships  crossed  to  Troy,  as  a  capital  instance  of  the  evil 
to  which  religion  inclines  the  hearts  of  men.  He  puts 
this  picture  in  the  forefront  of  his  poem  as  a  landmark 
of  its  thought;  it  was  from  such  monstrous  acts,  and  the 
mood  which  is  their  parent,  that  life  could  be  freed; 
in  other  words,  the  capital  thought  of  the  poem  is  that 
life  must  purify  itself.  For  Lucretius  looked  on  life 
as  not  so  much  wretched  because  of  external  calamity 
visited  upon  man,  but  because  of  those  woes  to  which 
his  own  will  consents  and  in  which  it  is  by  folly  or 
fear  an  accomplice;  religion  in  particular  was  some 
thing  of  which  man  could  rid  his  bosom,  since  it  was 
born  of  it.  To  this  end,  then,  Lucretius  strove;  it  is 
with  passion  that  he  pleads  the  cause,  and  it  is  this 
passion  which  underlies  the  intellectual  vigor  of  the  pano 
rama  of  nature  in  her  acts  and  scenes  which  he  unfolds, 
and  also  the  profound  moral  sympathy  with  which  he 
displays  the  human  lot  under  nature's  dispensation.  It 
is,  therefore,  not  exposition  but  persuasion  that  he  has 
in  view,  and  for  this  reason  he  inlays  the  verse  with  pic 
tures,  in  the  old  way  —  Gray's  way  —  and  puts  truth 
forth  as  poetry. 


294  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

His  procedure  is  easily  understood.  "This  terror, 
then,"  he  says,  "and  darkness  of  mind  must  be  dispelled 
not  by  the  rays  of  the  sun  and  glittering  shafts  of  day, 
but  by  the  aspect  and  the  law  of  nature."  He  excludes 
the  gods  from  dominion  over  nature  on  the  ground  that 
the  universe  is  infinite  and  command  of  it  is  beyond 
their  power.  Man's  conception  of  the  world  had  out 
grown  his  conception  of  the  gods.  "Who  can  order 
the  infinite  mass?  who  can  hold  with  a  guiding  hand  the 
mighty  reins  of  immensity?"  Lucretius  says.  And  again 
he  excludes  intelligence  from  nature  on  the  ground  of  the 
imperfection  of  the  world;  it  is  obviously  not  the  work 
of  intelligence.  Intelligence  belongs  to  man  alone;  it  is 
the  accident  of  his  being,  and  will  vanish  from  the  uni 
verse  with  him.  We  are  not  concerned  with  the  truth 
of  the  statement,  but  with  the  fact.  What  a  step  it  was, 
what  a  power  it  showed  in  man  to  change  his  mind! 
What  a  masterly  reversal  of  the  point  of  view  this  is, 
in  comparison  with  that  universal  habit  of  old  time 
which  projected  human  life  into  all  things  and  gave  the 
early  peoples  over  to  animism,  polytheism,  and  all  the 
subtler  forms  of  anthropomorphic  thought  as  it  fades 
away  in  philosophy  and  metaphysics.  It  is  by  just 
such  reversals  of  universal  past  beliefs  that  the  progress 
of  reason  is  marked. 

All  this  argument  against  the  gods  proceeds,  you  ob 
serve,  not  on  moral  but  on  intellectual  grounds;  that  is, 
it  is  a  characteristically  Greek  mode  of  thought.  The 
citadel  of  superstition,  however,  in  Lucretius'  eyes  was 
rather  in  the  fear  of  something  after  death  than  in  the 
presence  of  the  gods  in  this  life  and  the  world  of  nature. 
He  met  this  fear  by  the  simplest  mode  of  attack,  and 
denied  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  It  is  not  necessary 


LUCRETIUS  295 

to  go  into  his  argument.  To  me  the  most  remarkable 
thing  about  it  is  not  the  argument  nor  the  belief  itself, 
but  the  grave  and  almost  tender  considerateness  with 
which  Lucretius  tries  to  reconcile  men  to  this  belief  — 
it  is  almost  as  if  he  were  talking  to  children,  with  a 
gentle  but  firm  insistence,  and  with  entire  understanding 
of  their  disturbed  fears  and  sympathy  with  them,  but, 
nevertheless,  if  they  will  listen,  the  fact  is  not  only  really 
so,  but  best,  a  blessing,  the  greatest  blessing  that  can 
come  to  heal  the  wounds  of  men  and  give  them  peace. 
This  lulling  tone  in  the  argument  always  reminds  me  of 
the  persuasive  melody  of  the  verses  hi  the  "Faerie 
Queen,"  where  Despair  wooes  the  knight  to  self-destruc 
tion.  In  no  part  of  the  poem  is  Lucretius  more  vividly 
in  sympathy  with  life  in  its  natural  happiness.  "Soon," 
he  says,  "shall  thy  home  receive  thee  no  more  with 
glad  welcome,  nor  thy  true  wife,  nor  thy  dear  children 
run  to  snatch  the  first  kiss,  touching  thy  heart  with 
silent  gladness."  Nowhere  is  he  more  gravely  eloquent: 
"Death,  therefore,  to  us  is  nothing;  .  .  .  and  as  in 
time  gone  by  we  felt  no  distress  when  the  Carthaginians 
from  all  sides  came  together  to  do  battle,  and  all  things 
shaken  by  war's  troublous  uproar  shuddered  and  quaked 
beneath  high  heaven,  and  mortal  men  were  in  doubt 
which  of  the  two  peoples  it  should  be  to  whose  empire 
all  must  fall  by  sea  and  land  .  .  .  thus  when  we  shall 
be  no  more  .  .  .  nothing  whatever  can  happen  to  excite 
sensation,  not  if  earth  shall  be  mingled  with  sea,  and  sea 
with  heaven."  Nowhere  does  he  speak  with  more  dig 
nity,  like  a  Roman:  "Why  not,  then,  take  thy  departure 
like  a  guest  filled  with  life  —  and  with  resignation,  thou 
fool,  enter  upon  untroubled  rest?"  "Now  resign  all 
things  unsuited  to  thy  age,  and  with  a  good  grace  up 


296  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

and  greatly  go:  thou  must."  "Even  worthy  Ancus  has 
quitted  the  light,  .  .  .  the  son  of  the  Scipios,  thunder 
bolt  of  war,  terror  of  Carthage,  yielded  his  bones  to 
earth  just  as  if  he  were  the  lowest  menial.  .  .  .  Even 
Epicurus  passed  away  when  his  light  of  life  had  run  its 
course,  he  who  surpassed  in  intellect  the  race  of  man. 
.  .  .  Wilt  thou  then  hesitate,  and  think  it  a  hardship 
to  die?  .  .  .  None  the  less  will  that  everlasting  death 
await  you.  .  .  .  Thus  it  is  that  all  no  less  than  thou 
have  before  this  come  to  an  end,  and  hereafter  will  come 
to  an  end;  .  .  .  and  life  is  granted  to  none  in  fee- 
simple,  but  to  all  in  usufruct." 

Such  are  some  of  the  passages  in  which  Lucretius, 
like  a  patient  but  high-minded  teacher,  endeavors  to 
reconcile  the  minds  of  men  to  their  good.  For  in  his 
eyes  to  escape  from  the  evil,  whose  bondage  is  a  state 
of  supernatural  fear,  is  to  find  the  door  of  life  itself  — 
the  door  of  that  life  still  possible  to  men  which,  he  says, 
though  on  earth,  may  be  a  life  "not  unworthy  of  the 
gods." 

For  when  Lucretius  had  excluded  divine  power  from 
the  constitution  and  government  of  nature  —  and  he 
goes  on  to  show  that  all  events  are  merely  natural  phe 
nomena —  and  when  he  had  quieted  the  fear  of  some 
thing  after  death  by  denying  immortality  to  the  soul, 
he  had,  nevertheless,  performed  only  the  negative  part 
of  his  task.  He  had,  besides,  to  build  up  an  ideal  of 
wise  life  under  such  conditions.  The  view  that  great 
poets  take  of  human  life  is  never  very  rose-colored;  and 
Lucretius  is  no  exception  to  the  rule.  The  picture  that 
he  gives  of  the  child  at  birth  is  very  famous:  "The 
babe,  like  a  sailor  cast  ashore  by  the  cruel  waves,  lies 
naked  on  the  ground,  speechless,  in  need  of  every  aid 


LUCRETIUS  297 

«* 

to  life,  when  first  nature  has  cast  him  forth  by  great 
throes  from  his  mother's  womb;  and  he  fills  the  air  with 
his  piteous  wail,  as  befits  one  whose  doom  it  is  to  pass 
through  so  much  misery  in  life."  Human  nature  itself 
is  very  imperfect;  it  is,  says  Lucretius,  like  a  leaky  vessel 
that  will  not  retain  even  the  blessings  that  are  poured 
into  it,  and  moreover  it  vitiates  these  goods  inwardly 
by  a  certain  taint  and  nauseous  flavor,  as  it  were,  pro 
ceeding  from  itself.  The  discovery  of  wisdom  that  could 
in  any  way  remedy  these  objects  seems  to  Lucretius  a 
marvelous  action:  "a  god  he  was,"  he  says,  "a  god  who 
first  found  out  that  plan  of  life  which  is  now  termed 
wisdom."  It  was  a  more  divine  gift  than  corn  or  wine, 
for  life  could  go  on  without  these;  but  "a  happy  life  was 
not  possible  without  a  clean  breast."  The  deeds  of 
Hercules  were  nothing  in  comparison.  "The  earth  even 
now  abounds  in  wild  beasts  and  is  filled  with  troublous 
terror  throughout  woods  and  great  mountains  and  deep 
forests;  places  which  we  have  it  for  the  most  part  in 
our  power  to  shun.  But  unless  the  breast  is  cleared, 
what  battles  and  dangers  must  then  find  their  way  into 
us  in  our  own  despite!  What  cares,  what  fears!  — and 
pride,  lust,  and  wantonness,  what  disasters  they  occa 
sion!  and  luxury  and  sloth!  He  therefore  who  shall 
have  subdued  all  these  and  banished  them  from  the  mind 
by  words,  not  arms,  shall  he  not  have  a  just  title  to  be 
ranked  among  the  gods?"  It  is  a  Roman  who  is  thus 
exalting  the  victories  of  peace  over  those  of  war,  and  of 
reason  over  arms.  He  builds  then  his  ideal  of  a  life, 
content  with  little,  free  from  lust  for  political  power  or 
riches  or  pleasures,  strong  in  natural  affections  and  in 
the  reasonable  satisfaction  of  our  needs,  and  with  power, 
if  not  to  escape  calamity,  at  least  by  fortitude  to  blunt 


298  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

the  edge  of  evil.  To  learn  this  wisdom  is  the  best  use 
of  life  in  the  brief  interval  that  life  shall  be  ours. 

Such,  in  rough  outlines,  is  the  teaching  of  Lucretius. 
He  does  not  deny  the  existence  of  the  divine  gods;  but 
they  live  remote  from  man,  like  him  a  part  of  nature  in 
their  own  mode  of  existence,  and  to  be  careless  of  man 
kind  is  a  part  of  their  blessedness.  It  would  be  easy 
to  appear  to  find  in  that  principle  of  energy,  that  vigor 
which  is  nature,  whose  force  is  in  the  coming  of  spring 
and  the  gladness  of  cattle  and  in  the  thoughts  of  men, 
which  is  the  inspiration  of  this  poem  in  Lucretius  also, 
as  he  says  —  it  would  be  easy  to  find  in  this  something 
like  a  divine  principle  diffusing  itself  in  life;  but  it  is 
not  so  presented  by  Lucretius.  He  excluded  from  life 
every  thought  of  what  is  to  our  minds  religion  and  the 
immortal  soul;  and  did  it  as  a  bringer  of  intellectual  truth 
in  the  interest  of  man's  earthly  happiness.  It  is,  perhaps, 
hard  for  us  to  realize  that  he  seemed  to  himself  in  this  a 
benefactor  of  his  race.  Yet,  if  we  remember  justly  the 
pagan  world,  or  even  if  we  recall  the  vast  reign  of  reli 
gious  superstition  over  mankind  still  throughout  the  world 
and  realize  what  it  is,  if  we  remember  how  much  of  super 
stition  still  persists  even  in  the  purer  forms  of  religion, 
and  to  how  great  evils  religion  has  inclined  men's  minds 
in  the  centuries  since  Lucretius  wrote  —  if  we  keep  some 
thing  of  all  this  in  our  minds,  we  may  better  measure  the 
hopes  of  this  early  thinker  who  first  seized  hold  of  the 
truths  of  science  and  the  dominion  of  the  pure  reason 
over  men's  minds  as  if  there  were  in  it  the  coming  of  a  new 
and  happier  age. 

Lucretius  was  not  so  much  prescient  of  that  new  age 
as  living  in  it.  The  sense  of  being  a  discoverer  in  a  new 
land  is  one  of  the  most  vivid  traits  in  his  mind.  "I 


LUCRETIUS  299 

traverse,"  he  says,  "the  pathless  haunts  never  yet  trodden 
by  the  foot  of  man.  I  love  to  approach  the  untasted 
springs  and  to  quaff,  I  love  to  cull  fresh  flowers  and 
gather  for  my  head  a  crown  from  spots  whence  the  Muses 
have  yet  veiled  the  brows  of  none  —  because  I  teach  of 
great  things."  He  has  this  mark  of  the  poetic  faculty  — 
its  forward-looking  gaze,  its  atmosphere  of  the  virgin  peak 
and  the  new-breaking  morning.  He  has  also  the  mark  of 
passion  —  intense,  overwhelming,  absorbing  —  the  pas 
sion  of  the  intellect  for  truth  and  of  the  heart  for  service 
to  his  race.  He  has  the  mark  of  the  social  bond,  which 
belongs  to  genius.  He  stands,  moreover,  at  that  line  of 
fracture  in  the  thoughts  of  men  which  does  not  belong 
to  any  one  age,  like  the  Renaissance,  but  is  the  slowest 
of  the  great  social  changes  —  the  line  which  marks  the 
rise  of  reason  in  the  government  of  man's  thoughts.  It 
is  only  in  our  own  time  that  Lucretius  has  been  esteemed 
according  to  the  true  measure  of  his  greatness.  But 
what  a  far-sighted  and  firm-fixed  genius  that  was  which 
could  wait  eighteen  centuries  for  its  true  fame  — 
it  seems  like  one  of  those  great  suns  of  outer  space 
whose  light  requires  such  length  of  years  to  reach  the 
eyes  of  men.  There  is  this  loneliness  of  intellectual 
splendor,  hi  Lucretius  —  this  quality  of  solitariness  in 
his  genius,  which  I  began  by  speaking  of.  I  know  that 
Virgil  was  a  greater  poet,  and  revere  him  above  all  other 
poets,  but  in  thinking  of  Lucretius  only  the  old  words 
rise  to  my  lips  —  "This  was  the  noblest  Roman  of 
them  all." 


VIII 
INSPIRATION 

You  will,  perhaps,  remember  that  in  opening  these  lec 
tures  a  few  general  principles  were  suggested  with  re 
gard  to  the  nature  of  poetic  power,  and  from  time  to 
time  I  have  directed  your  attention  to  the  presence  of 
some  of  these  principles  in  the  six  poets  whose  genius 
we  have  examined.  Poetic  energy  was  defined  as,  in 
essence,  shared  and  controlled  emotion;  in  its  being 
shared  emotion  lies  its  social  principle;  in  its  being  con 
trolled  emotion  lies  its  artistic  principle.  I  have  dwelt 
less,  however,  on  these  two  subsidiary  aspects^  and 
have  sought  rather  to  bring  out  clearly  the  primary 
fact  that  emotion  is  the  base  of  poetry,  and  that  capacity 
for  it  is  the  radical  power  of  genius,  and  that  the  poetic 
life  so  led  is  naturally  one  of  unrest  and  misfortune.  In 
Marlowe  the  emotion  was  an  aspiration  of  all  the  facul 
ties,  the  individual  making  out  toward  the  infinite  in  all 
ways;  in  Camoens  it  was  emotion  closely  joined  with 
action  in  a  national  epic;  in  Tasso  it  was  emotion  dis 
joined  from  action  and  tending  to  the  condition  of  music, 
in  Byron  it  was  emotion  of  the  heart;  in  Lucretius  it  was 
emotion  of  the  intellect.  It  was  noticed,  too,  in  accord 
ance  with  the  general  principle  that  great  literatures 
arise  along  the  lines  of  fracture  in  human  progress,  that 
Marlowe  was  the  child  of  the  Renaissance  in  England, 
that  Camoens  was  the  poet  of  world-discovery,  that 
Byron  was  the  star  of  the  revolutionary  spirit  on  the 

3oi 


302  THE   INSPIRATION    OF    POETRY 

Continent,  and  Tasso  foretold  the  age  of  music,  and 
Lucretius  stood  in  the  dawn  of  scientific  reason;  each 
occupied  a  point  of  vantage,  and  was,  as  it  were,  a 
mountain  crag  that  caught  and  flashed  on  a  moment 
of  morning  light.  Each  represented  some  mood  of  the 
world  at  a  culminating  point,  and  with  intensity. 

The  prevailing  trait  of  the  poetic  temperament  in 
action  —  its  free  and  lawless  nature  —  has  also  been 
exemplified.  These  poets  have  left  upon  our  minds, 
I  am  persuaded,  a  sense  of  their  extraordinary  vital  power, 
of  their  strange  difference  from  men  in  general,  and  of 
something  that  awes  us  in  their  genius  as  if  a  miraculous 
element  entered  into  it.  The  sense  of  the  mystery  of 
spiritual  power  is  felt  in  connection  with  these  men.  It 
is  under  the  influence  of  such  thoughts  as  these  that  men 
speak  of  poetic  energy  as  an  inspiration ;  they  convey  thus 
their  sense  that  the  faculty  is  something  "above  man," 
that  it  partakes  of  the  mystery  of  all  power  in  the  uni 
verse,  that  it  is  kindred  with  what  they  call  the  divine. 
Something  —  they  know  not  what  —  but  something 
greater  than  the  man  speaks  through  the  man,  and  there 
is  a  virtue  in  his  works  that  his  own  unaided  power 
never  placed  there.  I  think  I  describe  the  feeling  fairly 
in  these  words.  Inspiration  is  a  natural  conviction  of 
men  with  respect  to  poetry;  and  to  the  greater  poets 
themselves  it  is  as  natural,  for  their  own  works  and 
their  states  of  mind  in  composing  seem  beyond  and  above 
themselves.  This  sense  of  possession,  of  being  caught 
up  into  a  sphere  of  greater  power,  is  the  true  poetic 
madness,  which  is  so  familiar  an  idea  in  Greek  thought, 
and  is  not  yet  extinct.  I  have  thought  it  appropriate 
to  close  this  various  survey  of  the  poets  with  some  final 
remarks  on  this  old  mystery,  so  ineradicable;  not  with 


INSPIRATION  303 

9 

any  idea  of  solving  it  at  all,  but  merely  to  offer  some 
few  considerations  with  regard  to  it,  which  have  occurred 
to  me  from  time  to  time.  Let  us  return,  therefore,  to 
that  gulf  which  we  found  in  the  first  lecture  between 
the  primitive  dancing  and  singing  horde  and  the  divine 
poet,  and  look  more  closely  at  the  phenomena. 

It  has  been  said  that  "the  mental  condition  of  the 
lower  races  is  the  key  to  poetry";  and  you  may  recall 
that  I  defined  the  poet  as  "under  excitement  presenting 
the  phenomenon  of  a  highly  developed  mind  working 
in  a  primitive  way."  Primitive  psychology  is  a  sub 
ject  beyond  my  ken;  but  there  are  a  few  obvious  facts 
that  a  modern  reader  can  hardly  escape.  You  will 
remember  that  in  the  dance  of  the  primitive  horde  the 
rhythm  is  very  simple,  and  the  cry  is  perhaps  one  sound, 
interminably  repeated.  Monotony  is,  in  fact,  charac 
teristic  of  primitive  life.  The  repetition  has  certain 
uses  easily  seen.  In  all  thought  of  primitive  conditions 
it  is  hardly  possible  for  us  to  exaggerate  the  feebleness 
of  the  human  mind  in  its  emergence  from  brute  condi 
tions.  The  first  use  of  monotonous  repetition  is  to  fasten 
attention,  a  difficult  thing  for  the  savage  mind;  power 
of  memory,  the  power  of  brain-cells  to  retain  the  mental 
image  of  a  thing  or  an  event,  must  have  been  greatly 
indebted  to  such  a  monotonous  habit.  Again,  the  rep 
etition  assists  in  labor:  songs  of  labor  are  not  a  relaxa 
tion  but  an  aid;  the  Egyptian  workmen  sing  when  they 
are  tired;  again,  the  well-known  law  that  every  mental 
idea  of  an  action  tends  to  realize  itself  in  that  action  is 
sufficient  to  account  for  one  definite  utility  there  is  in 
the  repeated  utterance  of  such  a  word  as  "strike,"  say, 
in  rhythm  before  each  blow.  On  the  passive  side,  also, 
it  will  be  readily  understood  that  monotone  has  an  hyp- 


304  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

no  tic  and  preparatory  influence  on  the  mind.  Indeed 
the  monotone  may  be  the  basis,  the  exciting  cause,  or 
nervous  predisposition  of  the  wild  passion  which  breaks 
forth  and  possesses  the  participants  in  the  dance.  Any 
of  you  who  have  ever  witnessed  such  performances  must 
have  been  struck  by  the  singular  coexistence  in  them 
of  monotone  and  of  excitement;  the  two  are  linked 
together  —  wild  excitement  such  as  we  never  dream  of, 
together  with  monotony  so  insistent  and  prolonged  as 
to  seem  incredible.  I  have  never  heard  Tennyson  read, 
but  I  have  heard  his  reading  precisely  imitated,  and 
I  was  struck  in  it  by  the  same  combination  —  namely, 
that  as  the  passion  grew,  the  chanted  monotony  of  the 
lines  stood  more  rigidly.  It  has  been  noticed,  too,  that 
poets  naturally  thus  chant  their  lines.  Wordsworth  did 
so,  and  I  have  heard  his  reading  also  imitated  with  pre 
cision.  These  two  elements,  monotony  and  excitement, 
are  faithfully  reflected  in  the  Mohometan  religion, 
which  is  near  to  primitive  habits  in  all  ways.  Thus  in  the 
several  sects  of  North  Africa  one  is  distinguished  from 
another  in  various  ways,  and  among  others  by  the 
formula  or  verse  which  is  repeated  by  each  member  a 
certain  number  of  times  daily.  Thus  the  brotherhood 
of  Abd-er-Rahman  must  recite  their  formula,  seven  words, 
three  thousand  times  a  day;  the  Tsidjani  must  pray  at 
morning  the  two  words  "God  pardon"  two  hundred  times, 
followed  by  a  longer  prayer  one  hundred  times  repeated, 
and  then  one  hundred  times  the  formula  of  seven  words. 
At  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  are  other  similar 
prayers,  and  at  sunset  the  same  as  at  morning.  In  Mos 
lem  mosques  I  have  myself  sometimes  taken  the  beads 
from  the  priest  and  repeated  the  formulas  as  I  wandered 
about,  to  see  what  it  was  like  to  live  in  that  way.  On  the 


INSPIRATION  305 

other  hand,  in  the  dervish  dances  the  element  of  excite 
ment  in  combination  with  monotony  is  easily  observed. 
It  appears,  therefore,  that  while  for  us  monotony  de 
stroys  interest  and  puts  us  to  sleep,  under  other  con 
ditions  it  is  the  ground  of  the  highest  excitement. 

I  have  a  theory  —  whether  I  have  read  it  or  dreamed 
it  I  do  not  know  —  that  the  emergence  of  man  from 
the  brute-stage  of  life  was  accompanied  by  an  immense 
outburst  and  increase  of  emotional  power.  If  it  were 
so,  the  emotion  was  of  this  kind;  and,  without  regard 
to  the  scientific  ground  of  the  theory,  it  appears  to  me 
prima  facie  plausible  to  this  degree,  that  such  emotion 
was  a  main  condition  of  the  gradual  advent  of  intellec 
tual  life.  If  we  remember  how  weak  and  unstable  then 
were  all  mental  phenomena,  still  perhaps  more  like  wak 
ing  dreams  than  what  we  know  as  continuous  and  or 
ganized  mental  life,  and  if  we  remember  also  the  power 
of  emotion  to  vivify  the  mental  processes,  it  is  plain  that 
minds  so  stirred  would  grow  and  would  store  power 
beyond  other  minds.  The  phenomenon  would  be  only 
what  is  our  well-known  experience  taking  place  in  a  lower 
plane  of  being.  Excitement  increases  the  speed  and 
power  of  the  mind;  the  use  of  stimulants  affords  such 
excitement,  and  when  the  excitement  arises  naturally 
through  the  emotions,  the  effect  is  the  same.  The  state 
so  induced,  whether  naturally  or  artifically,  does  not 
differ  in  kind  from  that  of  inspiration  —  that  is,  a  power 
above  the  normal  from  which  the  subject  of  it  recedes 
when  the  mood  is  gone.  Emotion,  however  induced, 
discharges  itself  according  to  the  constitution  of  the  man 
who  feels  it;  and  in  primitive  life  it  would  discharge 
itself  in  this  one  or  that  one  wildly,  wastefully,  spas 
modically,  perhaps,  and  in  brains  of  a  finer  or  stronger 


3o6  THE   INSPIRATION    OF    POETRY 

quality  in  another  way,  that  is,  along  directions  of 
thought.  The  most  active  brains  would  be  those  most 
capable  of  emotion. 

If  emotion  played  such  a  part  in  generating  intelligence, 
it  becomes  easier  to  understand  the  respect  paid  in  all 
primitive  times  to  those  who  are  described  as  madmen, 
and  to  all  who  were  subject  to  exalted  psychical  states 
from  whatever  cause;  and  the  impulse  which  led  men 
to  cultivate,  as  it  were,  the  trance  state  by  artificial  or 
semi-artificial  means,  which  is  found  in  all  religions, 
would  seem  more  normal.  Certain  it  is  that  about  the 
ancient  oracles  there  gathered  intellectual  and  moral 
power,  and  even  as  at  Delphi  great  guiding  power;  they 
were  very  old  places  of  immemorial  inspiration,  in  all 
its  defined  religious  forms,  its  trances,  and  ecstasies  as 
well  as  other  kinds  of  soothsaying;  they  were,  in  a  cer 
tain  sense,  the  seats  of  truth  most  revered.  For  the 
oracles  were  not  places  of  fraud;  fraud  entered  into  and 
combined  with  original  beliefs  and  practices,  as  it  has  in 
other  religions  without  number,  but  only  in  their  decay. 
Originally  the  oracles  were  sincere  facts  of  religion  as  it 
then  was.  There  were  other  concurring  causes  for  their 
religious  primacy;  but  it  seems  not  unlikely  that  the 
power  of  emotional  excitement  to  unlock  and  speed  intelli 
gence  may  have  been  one  element  of  real  utility  in  the 
phenomenon.  Facts  of  disease,  of  the  action  of  vapors, 
of  psychical  states  and  susceptibilities  that  are  still  ob 
scure,  were  no  doubt  involved  in  the  entire  primitive  atti 
tude  to  the  divine  madness;  but  in  the  midst  of  all  there 
remains  one  thread  of  sense  and  reality  in  the  normal 
power  of  excitement  to  set  the  intellectual  powers  in 
uncommon  action. 

It  is  also  to  be  observed  that  monotony  characterizes 


INSPIRATION  307 

<* 

the  primitive  mind  in  another  way  than  has  been  noticed; 
no  community  is  so  bound  in  convention,  tradition,  and 
routine  as  the  savage  horde ;  just  as  in  the  lower  organiza 
tions  of  life,  the  ways  of  doing  once  found  are  fossilized 
in  invariable  paths  of  instinct,  as  in  the  bees  and  ants,  so 
in  the  primitive  horde  ways  of  behavior  once  established 
became  conventionalized  with  a  rigor  that  tyranny  could 
never  equal.  The  great  difficulty  to-day  with  the  primi 
tive  African  people  is  to  persuade  them  to  do  other  or 
different  from  their  fathers.  In  the  primitive  horde  every 
one  conformed,  and  especially  after  superstitious  religion 
began  to  prevail;  that  is,  every  one  conformed  except  the 
madman  —  and  there  could  be  but  one  explanation  of 
such  a  man,  he  was  a  sacred  person,  in  some  way  touched 
with  that  power,  which,  whether  it  was  daemonic  or  di 
vine,  was  pretty  much  one  to  the  savage  mind.  Thus 
primitive  man  regarded  these  various  phenomena,  rang 
ing  from  the  ordinary  type  of  insanity  up  to  the  priestess 
of  the  temple,  as  belonging  in  the  region  of  inspiration, 
of  that  power  above  man  which  made  of  them  persons 
apart;  and  this  mood  toward  them  persisted  through  ages 
and  far  into  high  civilizations.  The  easy  old-fashioned 
way  was  to  look  on  all  this  primitive  and  pagan  belief  as 
merely  a  structure  of  superstition  and  fraud;  but  this  is 
no  longer  possible.  And  it  seems  to  me,  speaking  specu- 
latively  and  not  dogmatically,  that  in  this  universal  belief 
and  long  adherence  to  it  we  may  perhaps  discern  some 
historic  traces  of  the  great  function  of  emotion,  as  an 
evolutionary  element,  in  disengaging  and  freeing  and  es 
tablishing  the  intellectual  powers  of  the  race. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  phenomena  as  they  appear  in 
the  field  of  civilization.  There  we  see,  as  in  Greece,  men 
under  excitement  producing  poems,  dramas,  and  other 


3o8  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

works  at  moments  of  exaltation;  and  their  state  was  de 
scribed  by  observers  and  by  themselves  as  one  of  poetic 
madness.  It  was  a  theory  universally  received.  What 
is  it  that  had  happened?  It  seems  to  be  no  more  than 
in  other  cases  of  excitement,  except  for  a  peculiarity  in 
the  manner  of  the  discharge  of  the  emotion.  Let  me 
recur  to  the  distinction  which  was  alluded  to  in  the  first 
lecture  between  the  power  of  Dionysus  and  the  power  of 
Apollo,  made  by  the  brilliant  and  unfortunate  German 
writer,  Frederic  Nietzsche,  in  an  essay  of  his  youth  upon 
Greek  tragedy  at  a  time  when  he  was  dominated  by  en 
thusiasm  for  Wagner's  music.  He  divided  poetry  be 
tween  the  two:  to  Apollo  he  ascribed  the  intellectual  part, 
the  dream,  the  perceptive  faculty,  the  idea  as  it  is  known 
to  consciousness,  the  phenomenal;  to  Dionysus  he  gave 
the  intoxication,  the  self-destruction  or  renunciation  of 
consciousness,  the  revel  of  emotion,  the  unfathomed 
energy  of  existence;  or,  in  brief,  the  form-giving  element 
in  poetry  he  described  as  Apollinian,  the  energy  he  de 
scribed  as  Dionysiac.  He  worked  the  theory  out  in  his 
own  way.  But  it  is  interesting  to  find  the  youngest  of 
our  new  philosophers  adopting  and  interpreting  in  modern 
terms  the  oldest  doctrine  of  poetry  —  namely,  that  it  is 
a  madness;  and  the  distinction  he  draws  serves  to  clarify 
our  thoughts.  Dionysus  is  the  god  who  presides  over 
the  emotion  as  mere  energy,  as  an  intoxication,  a  physical 
and  mental  disturbance,  an  orgy  of  the  muscles  and  the 
nerves,  a  daemoniac  possession.  Apollo  is  the  god  who 
presides  over  inspiration  rather  in  its  intellectual  issue  as 
a  power  generating  fair  forms  and  clear-shining  truths,  of 
which  poetry  is  the  embodiment.  If  you  will  recall  what 
I  have  just  said,  that  in  the  mass  of  the  phenomena  there 
are  all  sorts  of  wasteful  emotion,  but  amid  them  there 


INSPIRATION  309 

is  one  thread  of  sense  and  reality  —  there  where  the 
waste  is,  is  Dionysus  raving;  there  where  the  single 
thread  is,  is  Apollo's  shining  hand. 

There  is  one  idea  that  played  a  great  part  in  Greek 
thought  —  the  idea  of  harmony.  Apollo  is  the  god  of 
harmony.  Now  the  Greeks  believed  that  there  is  a  prin 
ciple  of  harmony  in  the  world  which  takes  body  of  itself. 
It  is  independant  of  man,  but  it  may  take  body  through 
his  mind.  Thus  the  great  temple,  the  Parthenon,  was  a 
harmony  brought  into  being  by  man,  yet  he  did  not  make 
the  harmony.  This  is  the  view  so  familiar  to  us  in 
Emerson's  poem:  — 

"These  temples  grew  as  grows  the  grass; 
Art  might  obey,  but  not  surpass: 
The  passive  master  lent  his  hand 
To  the  vast  soul  that  o'er  him  planned." 

That  is,  there  is  a  principle  of  harmony  in  the  world 
independent  of  art,  but  through  art  it  takes  form  and 
becomes  apparent  to  the  eyes  or  ears  or  imagination  of 
man.  Apollo  is  the  god  who  so  guides  the  original  energy 
of  emotion  that  out  of  it  issues  this  fair  harmony  known 
through  the  senses  and  their  imagery  to  the  perceptive 
powers,  that  is,  to  the  mind  of  men.  This  is  what,  in  the 
first  lecture,  was  called  the  dream  that  attends  emotion, 
the  sensuous  and  intellectual  part;  but  it  was  also  there 
said  that  the  dream  is  not  something  added  to  emotion, 
but  is  the  product  of  the  emotion  itself.  The  Dionysiac 
orgy  ends  in  the  physical  state,  and  when  the  body  is 
exhausted  the  emotion  is  spent  and  gone;  the  inspiration 
of  Apollo  ends  in  an  intellectual  harmony  of  poetry  or 
music  or  other  art,  and  this  work  abides  after  the  emo 
tion  is  spent  —  is  indeed  the  enduring  and  eternal  form 


310  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

of  that  fleeting  emotional  overflow  in  the  soul  and  body 
of  the  poet  and  artist.  It  was  natural  that  inspiration 
should  gradually  become  restricted,  as  a  term,  to  this 
particular  operation  of  emotion  by  virtue  of  which  it 
realizes  for  the  mind  the  principle  of  harmony,  whether 
under  the  form  of  reason  —  that  is,  of  truth  —  or  under 
those  forms  of  the  senses  which  we  call  the  arts.  In 
spiration,  then,  is,  in  this  view,  emotion  vivifying  and 
giving  clearness  and  speed  to  the  intellect,  out  of  whose 
store  of  memory  and  imagination  it  creates  that  dream  in 
which  it  immortalizes  its  moment.  Emotion  flooding  the 
higher  soul  of  man,  and  not  merely  his  physical  part  — 
flooding  the  rational  soul,  and  there  creatively  productive 
according  to  the  harmonic  laws  of  that  realm  —  that  is 
the  power  of  Apollo,  that  is  inspiration  in  the  artistic 
sense. 

Wherein,  then,  is  the  madness?  for  it  is  agreed  that 
the  man  so  affected  is  out  of  his  senses  and  not  his  own 
master;  he  is  an  instrument,  a  voice,  not  personal  but 
oracular;  a  passive  master,  as  Emerson  says,  who  has  lent 
his  body  and  soul  to  the  god.  Is  it,  then,  indeed,  so 
strange?  or  is  not  this  a  thing  familiar  to  us  all  in  our 
daily  lives?  Do  we  not  all  have  such  moments,  so 
charged  with  emotion  that  we  seem  taken  out  of  ourselves, 
so  filled  with  intensity  of  life  that  we  seem  unconscious  — 
moments  when  new  truths  come  with  a  physical  flash  on 
the  eye,  when  perceptions  of  beauty  illuminate  the  soul 
with  sudden  and  ample  glory,  when  motions  of  love  ex 
pand  the  spirit  and  pour  it  abroad  —  and  then  comes 
darkness,  and  we  fail  from  out  the  mood;  but  yet  do  not 
altogether  fail,  for  the  memory  of  the  truth  stays  with 
us,  that  beauty  has  illuminated  all  our  days,  those  mo 
tions  of  love  have  expanded  the  heart  forever;  it  is  on 


INSPIRATION  311 

the  memory  of  such  moments  that  we  live.  You  remem 
ber  that  Gray  found  these  moments,  in  their  most  intense, 
revealing  and  exalted  power,  in  the  times  of  bereave 
ment;  and  I  suppose  that  is  the  commonest  experience 
of  humanity.  But  in  any  part  of  experience  they  may 
arise,  in  its  gloom  or  in  its  brightness;  and  when  they 
arise  is  it  not  true,  especially  if  the  experience  be  pro 
longed  or  recurrent,  that  we  seem  to  ourselves  not  en 
tirely  our  own  masters  and  to  others  somewhat  out  of 
our  senses? 

The  difference  that  makes  the  poet  lies  in  the  fact  that 
by  some  peculiarity  of  organization  he  stamps  an  image 
of  his  soul  at  such  moments  in  a  work  of  art,  and  what 
is  for  us  a  thing  of  the  private  life  becomes  through 
genius  a  thing  of  the  public  good.  He,  too,  fails  from 
out  the  mood,  but  this  work  of  his  remains;  he  feels  in 
the  same  way  as  we  the  mystery  of  the  experience;  he 
cannot  repeat  it;  he  cannot  summon  the  inspiration  at 
will;  he  can  only  observe  its  times  and  seasons,  and  be 
in  a  state  of  preparedness  for  the  god  —  to  use  the  reli 
gious  phrase  —  for  inspiration  has  its  conditions,  like 
all  mortal  things,  and  these  are  subject  to  knowledge. 
If  you  will  read  Emerson's  essay  on  Inspiration,  you 
will  find  that  he  employs  nearly  the  whole  of  it  in  laying 
down  these  conditions;  yet  they  might,  I  think,  all  be 
present,  and  the  inspiration  not  occur. 

Now,  if  you  will  apply  what  is  true  of  our  own  lives 
to  the  life  of  the  race  in  time,  you  will  have  a  fair 
image  of  the  relation  of  literature  to  civilization.  The 
great  poets,  the  great  ages  of  poetry,  are  such  selected 
and  fortunate  moments  of  the  life  of  the  race  when 
the  power  of  emotion  was  roused  and  released,  and  es 
pecially  released  in  those  harmonic  forms  of  the  rational 


312  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

soul,  poetry,  art,  truth,  which  are  all  essentially  forms 
of  the  reason;  in  these  men  the  flowering  of  the  soul 
takes  place  in  time.  The  race  lives  long  upon  the 
memory  of  them,  measures  its  own  capacity  by  them, 
and  believes  that  in  them,  if  anywhere,  it  touches  the 
divine  pulses  of  the  world.  Poetic  madness  is  thus  no 
more  than  the  common  emotional  experience  of  men  in 
a  form  of  higher  intensity,  and  especially  characterized 
by  the  trait  that  it  leaves  an  artistic  product  in  which 
the  emotion  is  permanently  recorded.  Furthermore,  it 
should  be  observed  that  men  of  genius  occupy  very  often 
a  position  analogous  to  the  primitive  madman  who  does 
not  conform  his  behavior  to  the  ways  of  the  tribe;  the 
poet  is  by  his  nature  somewhat  lawless,  especially  when 
under  the  control  of  his  genius;  and  he  is  often  regarded, 
therefore,  as  dangerous,  diabolical,  denounced  as  an 
atheist  and  sent  off  into  the  desert,  disowned  and  de 
famed;  in  other  words,  being  the  announcer  of  new 
moods  and  new  truths,  he  is  distrusted  by  men  of  the 
past  and  society  as  already  organized  in  belief  and  prac 
tice;  genius,  in  fact,  is  the  principle  of  variation  in  so 
ciety,  it  is  the  element  in  which  the  new  comes  to  birth; 
and  to  the  old  the  new  always  seems  a  madness  because 
it  is  in  contradiction  with  that  past  experience  which  is 
the  test  of  sanity  for  the  bulk  of  men.  Poetic  madness, 
then,  is  characterized  not  only  by  the  fact  that  it  leaves 
an  artistic  product,  but  also  by  the  fact  that  this  product 
is  a  new  birth  in  the  world. 

Let  us  consider  now,  in  the  light  of  these  conceptions, 
that  course  of  changes  in  the  beliefs  and  moods  of  men 
that  we  commonly  denominate  progress,  of  which  great 
literatures  are  the  record.  You  will  remember  that  I 
spoke  of  great  literatures  as  being  in  the  landscape  of 


INSPIRATION  313 

«* 

the  mind  like  mountain  ranges  that  mark  the  emotional 
upheavals  of  the  race;  and  I  have  just  spoken  of  them 
again  as  being  the  places  where  the  race  believes  that  it 
touches  the  divine  pulses  of  the  world.  It  is  convenient 
to  recur  to  the  conception  of  Lucretius  as  he  expresses 
it  in  the  great  invocation  with  which  he  begins  his  poem; 
he  addresses  the  energy  of  nature  and  prays  that  this 
power  which  brings  forth  the  springtime  will  inspire  his 
mind;  inspiration,  for  him,  is  this  breathing  and  awaken 
ing  power  in  his  mind,  which  is  one  with  all  power.  He 
conceived  of  man  as  evolved  out  of  nature  without  any 
divine  intelligence  in  the  process;  the  eye  was  not  made 
to  see  nor  the  ear  to  hear,  but  these  senses  had  arisen 
under  the  conditions  existing  and  had  become  what  they 
could;  that  was  his  theory.  Man  is  born  in  the  world 
of  nature,  and  I  suppose  we  shall  all  agree  that  man's 
life  in  nature  as  he  rose  through  stages  of  animal  and 
primitive  life  was  a  hard  struggle;  nature  was  not  al 
together  his  friend,  and  civilization  slowly  won  seems 
to  have  been  won  somewhat  in  spite  of  nature,  and  nature 
is  still  very  indifferent  to  man  and  his  fortunes;  man 
exists  by  making  what  use  he  can  of  the  foothold  he  has 
won  in  the  world  of  natural  law.  Man  is  also  born  into 
a  psychical  world;  that  is,  as  his  body  is  subject  to  natural 
law,  his  mind  is  subject  to  another  sphere  of  law,  the 
law  of  mind.  Man's  faculties  have  unfolded,  we  may 
suppose,  in  the  same  way  as  his  senses,  under  the  con 
ditions  of  the  case;  they  were  not  created  but  have 
evolved.  Nor  is  there  any  reason  to  believe,  so  far  as 
I  can  see,  that  the  world  of  mind  is  any  more  friendly 
to  man  than  the  world  of  nature  has  shown  itself  to  be. 
Certainly  the  race  began  by  being  merged  in  profound 
ignorance,  and  in  its  first  steps  it  was  plunged  in  universal 


314  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

error,  especially  in  respect  to  what  we  call  higher  truth. 
It  was  long  before  the  errors  of  the  senses  —  as  for 
example  that  the  sun  moves  round  the  earth  —  were 
corrected.  In  the  field  of  religion  the  first  essays  of 
the  race  were  universally  what  we  now  call  savage  super 
stition,  a  realm  of  magic  and  senseless  formulas,  of  the 
worship  of  stones  and  animals,  and  it  was  long  before 
the  conception  of  immortality  itself  was  other  than  a 
gloom  or  a  curse;  the  way  upward  from  the  ideas  and 
moods  of  primitive  man  to  such  ideas  and  moods  as 
prevail  in  that  small  section  of  mankind  which  is  called 
enlightened  was  as  hard  a  way  as  the  way  of  material 
civilization  in  nature  has  been.  Man  has  always  been 
in  peril,  and  has  often  suffered.  Emotion  is  one  great 
part  of  psychical  life;  but  it  is  plain  that  the  history  of 
emotion  has  been  as  much  a  record  of  disaster  as  the 
history  of  reason  has  been  a  record  of  error.  If  you 
read  the  history  of  religion  and  attend  to  the  kind  and 
quality  and  issue  of  emotion  toward  the  divine,  what  an 
extraordinary  chapter  it  is  of  folly  and  pain  and  evil! 
It  is  only  slowly  that  emotion  found  out  the  useful  and 
guiding  ways,  the  illuminating,  the  humanizing  ways 
of  its  life;  just  as  slowly  reason  found  out  its  true 
methods  in  thought. 

Poetry,  at  its  birth,  marks  the  point  of  victory  in 
this  career,  in  this  experimentation  of  emotional  energy; 
thereafter  it  gave  the  scale  of  value  to  emotion.  Emo 
tion  had  value  in  proportion  as  it  became  such  inspira 
tion  as  Lucretius  prayed  for,  and  passed  into  the  intellect 
and  was  there  discharged  in  poetry,  or  music,  or  sculp 
ture,  or  other  forms  of  art,  and,  in  the  scientific  realm, 
of  truth;  there  it  evoked  and  bodied  forth  that  principle 
of  harmony  which  seems  to  be  the  main  fact  of  the  psy- 


INSPIRATION  315 

chical  world,  the  world  of  the  perceptions,  the  world  of 
mind.  The  function  of  poetry  is  to  qualify  the  emo 
tional  life  of  the  race  as  the  function  of  science  is  to 
qualify  its  rational  life.  The  test  of  emotion  is  its 
capacity  to  produce  poetry,  as  the  test  of  reason 
is  its  capacity  to  produce  science.  The  wasteful  and 
destructive  emotion,  the  intoxication  and  raving,  the 
physical  exhaustion  and  death  of  Dionysus  is  laid  off  and 
avoided;  the  creative  emotion  issuing  hi  harmonies  of 
the  mind  which  we  call  the  life  of  the  spirit  —  this,  the 
inspiration  of  Apollo,  is  preferred.  The  soul  has  a  sure 
instinct  in  these  matters;  as  a  rule,  it  forgets  the  past 
rapidly  and  gladly,  but  it  holds  in  its  memory  and  clings 
invincibly  to  the  great  ages  in  which  this  harmony  was 
most  given  out  —  to  poetry  which  is  the  most  immortal 
of  human  works,  to  art  in  all  its  culminating  periods,  to 
Greece  as  the  most  fruitful  mother  of  both  beauty  and 
intellect  under  the  guardianship  of  the  Delphic  inspira 
tion. 

The  mood  of  the  world  changes.  Race  differs  from 
race,  and  age  from  age,  hi  mood  as  well  as  in  ideas. 
Each  race  and  age  creates  its  own  poetry,  according  to 
its  place  in  civilization  and  the  power  of  its  life.  I  was 
much  struck  by  the  mood  of  the  Mohammedan  religion  — 
by  its  sincerity,  its  dignity,  and  the  fitness  of  the  mood  to 
the  nature  of  the  people.  The  bare  and  quiet  mosques 
seemed  to  me  a  fitter  place  for  the  presence  of  the 
living  god  of  the  desert,  the  god  of  boundless  nature, 
than  any  Christian  cathedral  I  ever  entered.  In  a 
Christian  church  I  am  apt  to  feel  something  of  the 
confinement  of  a  tomb,  the  air  of  one;  the  service  seems 
a  watch  for  the  resurrection.  Not  only  does  race  differ 
from  race,  but  man  from  man  in  the  mood  of  life;  the 


3i6  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

test  of  the  mood,  of  its  value  in  the  scale  of  worth,  is 
its  power  to  give  out  the  noble  dream,  body  forth  a 
poetic  form  for  itself,  or  if  not  to  create  one  freshly,  to 
find  one  among  those  offered  by  the  poets,  musicians, 
artists,  and  prophets  of  the  world.  The  service  of  the 
poets  is  to  provide  such  forms  of  feeling  for  mankind. 
The  variety  of  such  forms  now  in  the  world  is  great  in 
every  field  of  life,  in  the  Bibles  of  the  race,  in  the  battle 
songs  of  nations,  in  the  love  and  death  songs  and  the 
faith  songs  of  many  ages.  The  range  of  value  in  these 
is  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest;  they  are  higher  in  pro 
portion  as  they  contain  a  more  perfect  beauty,  a  more 
pure  truth,  a  more  simple  harmony  of  many  elements. 

Is  the  inspiration,  then,  divine,  and  do  all  these  forms 
proceed  from  one  infinite  power  that  prompts  them? 
Many  a  poet  and  many  a  prophet  has  so  affirmed  it  of 
his  own  work  —  but  when  Mahomet  says  that  he  has 
talked  with  God,  there  is  a  grave  shaking  of  heads. 
It  would  seem  that  Jehovah  hardly  escaped  the  curse 
he  visited  upon  Babel,  but  has  himself  spoken  to  the 
nations  in  many  tongues.  It  is  not  necessary  to  be  too 
well  assured.  The  name  of  the  god  adds  nothing  to  the 
truth  of  the  doctrine.  The  god  of  poetry  is  certainly, 
as  Tennyson  says,  the  nameless  one;  the  source  of  in 
spiration  is  no  more  known  than  the  source  of  the  other 
moods  by  which  our  being  is  sustained.  It  belongs  to 
our  sense  of  the  infinite  in  which  man  feels  he  vaguely 
shares,  that  the  inspiration  is  inexhaustible,  and  con 
tinually  puts  forth  a  new  form.  The  diversity  of  these 
forms,  viewed  in  their  length  and  compass  from  the 
beginning  and  through  the  world,  is  one  miracle;  the 
second  and  greater  miracle  is  that  there  is  forever,  age 
after  age,  an  ever  new  birth  of  the  hitherto  unknown  and 


INSPIRATION  317 

unexpected.  The  mood  of  the  world  is  forever  renewed. 
The  poets  contain  this  element  of  promise;  in  them  is 
the  thing  that  shall  be;  they  are  the  wings  on  which  the 
new  sphere  swims  into  our  ken.  The  infinite  energy, 
of  which  Lucretius  sang,  has  thus  its  times  of  putting 
forth  in  the  race,  its  springtides  of  fresh  abundance,  its 
blossoming  from  age  to  age,  from  race  to  race;  there  is 
no  finality  in  any  of  its  blossoms;  but  it  never  ceases  to 
put  forth  another  and  another  strange  and  unknown 
flower. 

I  have  spoken  to  but  little  purpose  if  I  have  not  already 
made  it  plain  that  the  poetic  energy,  the  emotion  and 
the  dream,  the  madness,  is  common  to  men  and  belongs 
to  the  soul  by  its  own  nature.  The  poetic  life  is  not 
the  privilege  of  some,  but  the  path  of  all,  and  the  passion 
and  the  power  to  lead  it  is  the  measure  of  every  man's 
soul.  Men  may  be  great  in  other  ways,  great  in  trade 
and  politics  and  war;  but  they  are  great  in  soul  in 
proportion  as  they  are  poets.  Just  as  in  the  original 
dancing  horde  all  were  poets,  so  is  it  still;  there  may  be 
one  among  them  who  leads  the  dance,  but  all  may  join 
hands  and  voices  and  follow  on  in  unison.  The  poetic 
impulse  is  universal;  from  the  emotional  urgency  of  life 
itself  no  one  can  escape,  but  he  may  avail  himself  of  it 
only  for  the  drunkenness  of  the  senses,  for  the  raving 
physical  waste  of  the  untaught,  unbridled  madness;  but 
the  man  must  have,  besides  the  power  of  emotion  which 
nature  pours  into  him,  the  wise  use  of  this  power;  and 
if  he  have  wisdom  in  his  soul,  he  will  strive  to  be  inducted 
rather  into  the  choir  of  Apollo,  and  behold  and  share 
in  those  forms  of  beauty  and  truth  in  which  the  harmony 
of  the  world  is  seen,  for  these  forms  of  beauty  and  truth, 
revealed  in  poetry  and  shaped  in  art,  are  the  intellectual 


318  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

children  of  emotion.  In  their  company  and  gazing  upon 
them  and  habituating  his  eyes  to  their  presence,  he  will 
form  his  own  soul  after  their  pattern;  for  these  works 
are  so  intimately  bound  with  the  emotion  out  of  which 
they  sprang  into  being,  they  are  so  instinct  with  its 
immortal  vigor,  that  they  generate  the  same  emotion  in 
the  beholder  according  as  he  has  power  to  receive  it  and 
take  its  form  in  his  own  soul;  it  is  thus  that  the  poets 
are  the  guardians  of  the  soul.  Their  office  is  to  nourish 
the  poet  that  is  in  each  one  of  us,  and  to  free  the  poetic 
energy  in  our  bosoms  in  noble  forms  of  our  own  private 
life;  for  by  commerce  with  the  poets  the  creative  energy 
steals  into  the  breast,  and  there  builds  with  original  force 
hi  the  life  that  is  most  inviolably  our  own  and  unshared 
by  and  unknown  to  the  world.  The  great  part  of  man 
kind  lead  this  life  mostly  under  the  phases  of  religion, 
whose  emotional  modes  are  fixed  in  forms  of  dignity, 
beauty  and  power  sanctioned  by  long  use;  but  in  other 
fields  the  poetic  life  is  neglected. 

I  am  the  more  struck,  I  think,  as  I  grow  older,  with 
the  sense  of  how  small  a  part  of  mankind,  and  how  few 
persons  in  any  generation,  really  possess  the  higher  fruits 
of  civilization;  and  consequently  how  frail  is  man's  hold 
even  on  the  good  which  he  has  so  hardly  won.  It  is  not 
only  liberty  which  can  be  quickly  lost,  but  every  supreme 
blessing.  How  intermittent  and  brief  the  life  of  the 
arts  has  been;  how  rare  is  a  poetic  age  and  how  soon 
extinct,  if  one  looks  at  the  general  history  of  the  world! 
We  are  fortunate  in  the  time  of  our  birth,  in  our  in 
herited  poetry,  and  in  the  flourishing  of  reason  among 
us;  the  opportunity  for  the  poetic  life  is  put  into  our 
hands;  all  of  us,  if  we  will,  can  acquire  that  wise  use  of 
emotion  which  I  have  tried  to  emphasize.  For  like  all 


INSPIRATION  319 

power,  emotion  is  a  thing  of  danger;  in  the  hands  of 
the  foolish  it  often  destroys  them;  and  the  wisest  cannot 
better  secure  himself  than  by  developing  his  emotions 
through  the  poets  and  their  kindred.  He  will,  so  doing, 
find  that  emotion  is  the  servant  of  the  highest  reason; 
for  that  principle  of  harmony  which  emotion  gives  out 
and  unveils  in  its  finite  forms  is  the  element  that  reason 
takes  note  of  as  the  eye  takes  note  of  light.  The  true 
opposition  is  between  the  infinite  and  the  finite.  Emo 
tion  lies  in  the  sphere  of  the  infinite;  the  infinite  is 
inexhaustible,  and  hence  there  is  no  finality  in  the  works 
of  genius  or  in  our  own  lives,  as  poets  and  artists  are  the 
first  to  confess,  for  they  have  no  sooner  finished  their 
work  than  they  are  discontented  with  it  and  throw  it 
aside.  You  will  never  seize  the  poet  in  his  poem,  for 
he  has  already  left  it;  and  the  poem  is  only  the  prophet's 
garment  that  he  leaves  behind  him  in  your  hands.  In 
spiration  resides  in  the  infinite,  in  emotion.  Reason, 
even  the  creative  reason,  is  of  the  finite,  the  measured, 
the  known;  its  works  are  renewed  from  the  great  deep, 
the  throbbing  of  life  itself,  inexhaustibly;  and  hence  after 
each  of  the  great  and  glorious  toils  of  genius,  each 
emanation  of  the  dream,  whether  individual  or  the  labor 
of  a  race,  when  the  last  stroke  is  struck,  the  last  word 
said,  and  the  light  begins  to  die  off  —  then  emotion,  which 
is  of  the  infinite,  again  supervenes,  still  brooding  in  itself 
some  new  world,  some  new  gospel  of  gladder  tidings  of 
greater  joy. 


THE  POE  CENTENARY 


An  address  before  the  Bronx  Society  of 
Arts  and  Sciences,  New  York,  January  19, 
1909,  on  the  centenary  of  the  birth  of  Poe, 


THE  POE  CENTENARY1 

WE  are  gathered  here  to  do  honor  to  genius.  One 
name  is  on  our  lips,  one  memory  is  in  our  hearts  —  that 
of  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  Sixty  years  ago  five  mourners  stood 
round  his  grave;  today  in  five  great  cities  of  the  nation, 
and  elsewhere,  men  gather,  as  we  do  here,  by  scores  and 
hundreds,  to  commemorate  his  birth.  It  is  because 
genius,  once  born  into  life,  is  indestructible;  it  is  safe 
alike  from  any  stroke  of  earthly  fortune  and  from  time's 
attack,  it  is  the  immortal  vigor  of  the  race.  Men  do  not 
willingly  let  the  memory  of  it  die;  men  protect  its  mem 
ory,  and  this  is  singularly  true  of  Poe.  No  American 
name  in  literature  is,  I  think,  so  warmly  cherished.  It 
is  a  pleasure,  too,  to  recognize  American  genius,  and 
today  it  is  an  added  grace  that  Poe  was  a  child  of  the 
South.  He  was,  nevertheless,  both  in  his  genius  and  his 
life,  remarkably  free  from  locality.  It  has  not  been  suffi 
ciently  observed  hitherto,  I  think,  that  more  than  any 
of  his  contemporaries  Poe  occupied  a  central  position  in 
his  generation;  he  was  better  acquainted  with  the  lite 
rary  product  of  the  time,  and  both  by  his  residence 
and  his  letters  was  in  touch  with  a  wide  area  of  the 
country.  He  had  lived  in  Richmond,  Baltimore,  Phila 
delphia  and  New  York,  and  had  repeatedly  visited  New 
England,  and  his  correspondence  reached  Cincinnati,  St. 
Louis,  Louisville,  Tennessee  and  Georgia.  More  than 
the  others,  he  had  national  range. 

Poe  was  a  Southerner  by  his  breeding;  he  was  an 
American  by  his  career;  he  was  a  citizen  of  the  world 

1  Copyright,  1910,  by  The  Bronx  Society  of  Arts  and  Sciences. 

323 


324  THE    POE    CENTENARY 

by  his  renown.  It  was  a  distinguishing  trait  of  his 
personality  that  when  his  first  tales  were  hardly  dry 
from  the  press,  he  was  already  negotiating  for  publica 
tion  in  England.  He  always  belonged  in  spirit  to  the 
larger  world.  The  adventurous  sense  of  it  was  his 
cadet  dream  of  joining  the  armies  of  Poland  when  he  left 
West  Point  The  literary  stamp  of  it  was  that  in  the 
first  lines  of  his  criticism,  unfledged  critic  that  he  was, 
he  set  up  a  standard,  not  that  of  the  leisured  hearth  of 
Virginia  or  the  newspaper  offices  of  New  York  or  the 
parlor  coteries  of  Boston,  but  the  standard  of  all  the 
world;  and  though  he  contracted  opportunism,  that  was 
only  the  wear  and  tear  of  practical  life  on  a  fine  ideal. 

But  it  is  not  enough  to  be  a  critic.  No  critic  ever 
had  his  hundredth  birthday  celebrated.  Poe  was  from 
his  youth  an  all-round  man  of  letters.  One  trait  which 
peculiarly  wins  the  respect  of  his  fellow  craftsmen,  I 
think,  is  that  he  never  was  anything  else  but  a  man  of 
letters.  He  never  earned  any  money  except  by  his 
pen.  He  labored  twenty  years;  for  four  of  these  he  had 
a  salary  as  an  editor,  and  a  dozen  times  he  spoke  from 
a  platform;  otherwise  he  was  an  unattached  writer  and 
lived  from  day  to  day.  I  have  no  manner  of  doubt  he 
was  sincere  in  saying  that  in  thus  adhering  to  his  profes 
sion  he  cheerfully  bore  poverty.  His  profession  pauper 
ized  him.  Is  it  not  startling  to  think  that  we  are 
gathered  here,  in  a  city  which  is  the  shrine  and  throne 
of  gold,  to  do  honor  to  a  man  who  was  a  beggar  all  his 
days?  It  is  a  striking  tribute  to  true  values.  I  make 
no  complaint  of  fate.  Literature  dedicates  her  sons 
to  the  vow  of  worldly  sacrifice.  It  has  been  so  of  old 
time.  He  was  not  chosen  to  be  poor  more  than  the 
others  were  chosen.  Hawthorne  and  Emerson  and  Poe 


THE   POE   CENTENARY  325 

—  the  three  most  brilliant  men  in  our  literature  —  all 
led  meager  lives,  but  Poe  alone  was  the  perfect  victim. 
Poe  not  only  lived  meagerly;  at  times  he  starved.  Pov 
erty  is  a  terrible  foe;  it  is  thorough  in  its  work  on  men 
and  nations;  it  kills.  What  a  victory  it  is  of  the  spirit 
over  its  life,  of  the  spirit  that  makes  for  immortality 
through  all  disguises  of  human  wretchedness  —  that  we 
have  today  in  our  minds  and  hearts,  out  of  Poe's  meager 
and  starved  life,  poetry,  romance,  the  imagery  that  fades 
not  away!  It  is  true  that  there  is  that  in  it  which 
terrifies;  here  is  the  legend  and  superscription  of  pain 
and  death;  his  music  is  the  requiem  of  the  soul  that 
breathed  it  forth.  But  his,  too,  is  praise.  Poe  made 
of  his  fate  his  victory;  and,  for  the  victim  of  life,  that  is 
the  master-stroke.  We  "bid  fair  peace  be  to  his  sable 
shroud." 

It  is  fit  now,  though  late,  to  bring  the  laurel  to  him 
who  first  sent  the  dark  green  leaf  across  the  sea  to 
Tennyson  and  Mrs.  Browning,  and  among  ourselves 
brought  it  to  Hawthorne  and  Lowell  in  their  obscure 
years.  And  he  has  more  to  grace  his  memory  —  that 
which  all  men  value,  the  kindly  recollection  of  those 
who  were  most  nigh  him.  Poe  won  the  laurel  and  the 
marble;  but  the  mortal  flower  upon  his  grave  is  this  — 
that  he  endeared  himself  to  his  friends.  He  had  many 
friends.  He  had  the  best.  There  was  no  truer  gentle 
man  then  alive  than  Kennedy,  who  to  the  honor  of 
Baltimore  befriended  his  early  manhood.  There  was  no 
more  kindly  colleague  than  Willis,  who  gave  him  his 
hand  in  New  York  and  never  drew  it  away.  There  were 
no  warmer  comrades  for  mates  in  life  than  Thomas, 
Halleck  and  Burr.  Poe  had  also  that  power  which  is 
one  of  the  singularities  of  genius  —  the  power  to  let 


326  THE   POE   CENTENARY 

the  soul  shine  on  all.  His  office-boy  idolized  him; 
children  suffered  him  to  play  with  them;  and  every 
wayfarer  who  touched  his  hand  or  had  speech  of  him 
on  his  wandering  road,  seems  to  have  remembered  the 
light  of  that  day  forever. 

Such  are  some  of  the  thoughts  that  rise  hi  me  on  this 
occasion.  I  seem  to  share  them  with  you.  These  traits 
of  fortune  and  of  character  to  which  I  have  alluded, 
belong  to  humanity,  and  link  genius  to  the  understanding 
hearts  of  men;  but  genius  is  itself  the  most  revealing 
force  of  the  soul;  its  manifestations  are  revelations  of 
our  nature.  The  genius  of  Poe  was  one  of  the  mani 
fold  forms  of  humanity;  else  it  were  hot  genius;  but 
that  man  who  would  speak  rightly  of  him  must,  in 
his  vision  of  human  nature,  have  room  and  marge  enough 
to  know  that  the  spirit  of  life  is  Infinite  in  its  flowering, 
that  the  Shepherd  of  us  all  has  many  folds. 


SHAKESPEARE,  AN  ADDRESS 


An  address  delivered  at  the  celebration  of 
the  tercentenary  of  the  death  of  Shakespeare, 
under  the  auspices  of  the  department  of 
English  of  Brown  University,  in  Sayles  Hall, 
April  26,  1916 


SHAKESPEARE 

IT  is  not  for  any  single  voice  to  bear  to  Shakespeare  the 
plaudits  of  the  theater.  The  mere  multiplicity  of  the 
events  of  this  wide  commemoration,  the  volume  of  uni 
versal  applause  of  the  generations,  force  us  to  realize 
the  insignificance  of  any  particular  expression  of  the 
general  praise.  As  in  a  popular  festival,  each  partici 
pant,  as  he  passes,  follows  his  own  whim  in  the  common 
carnival.  The  scholar  will  turn  the  leaves  of  his  book 
and  linger  caressingly  over  recondite  difficulties  of  the 
text  or  the  meaning;  the  player  will  fit  the  costume  to 
the  mind,  and  play  the  part  from  his  bosom.  Every 
thing  will  go  on  as  in  a  play.  To-day  all  the  world  's  a 
stage.  For  the  most  part,  it  is  by  the  eye  that  Shakes 
peare's  world  will  be  seen,  embodied  in  a  fantastic  round 
of  revels,  a  general  masquerade,  a  pageant,  how  varied, 
how  familiar,  how  interminable! 

Shakespeare's  world! 

"Create  he  can 
Forms  more  real  than  living  man!" 

Falstaff,  Ariel,  Titania's  Indian  Boy!  How  they  throng 
the  memory  as  if  coming  through  a  hundred-gated 
Thebes !  If  it  is  by  its  transitoriness  that  we  know  life, 
it  is  by  its  permanence  that  we  know  the  ideal.  There 
is  an  eternal  quality,  an  everlasting  freshness,  on  the 
intellectual  creations  of  man,  analogous  to  the  morning 
luster  that  still  lingers  on  the  Eros,  the  Apollo,  the 

329 


330  SHAKESPEARE,   AN   ADDRESS 

Hermes,  of  ancient  days.  Who  of  English  speech,  bred 
to  traditions  of  his  race,  does  not  recognize  Hamlet  in 
his  "inky  cloak"  at  a  glance?  Not  to  know  him  would 
argue  one's  self  untaught  in  the  chief  glories  of  his 
language.  With  what  a  welcome  eye  we  greet  the 
Henrys,  old  John  of  Gaunt,  old  York,  and  how  many  a 
young  prince  of  brief  or  long  renown!  We  are  able 
to  look  in  Prospero's  Magic  Book,  though  buried  deeper 
than  ever  plummet  sounded.  What  a  story  is  recorded 
there,  familiar  to  our  sight  since  our  childish  eyes  first 
fell  on  some  glorious  picture  of  the  luminous  leaf!  What 
is  most  impressive  to  me,  in  a  world  whose  character 
istic  it  is  to  pass  away,  is  the  permanence  of  these  ideal 
incarnations  of  human  life  in  its  vital  flow  and  infinite 
variety.  It  is  three  hundred  years  since  the  Maker  of 
Magic  passed;  yet  his  figures  seem  to  have  left  us  but 
an  hour  ago.  They  combine,  as  they  recede,  into  a 
Renaissance  procession,  wreathing  along  in  another  age 
than  ours;  they  compose,  in  the  distance,  into  a  true 
triumph  of  time,  with  many  a  medieval  and  classical 
element  of  look  and  gesture;  and  yet,  ere  the  scene  fades, 
it  has  opened  to  our  eyes,  we  know,  the  timeless  vision 
of  life. 

Two  things  in  this  great  vision  fascinate  me:  the 
charm  of  the  youths,  the  wisdom  of  mature  age.  It 
is  in  the  earlier  plays  that  I  find  the  spirit  of  April, 
mounting  with  each  year  into  a  richer  and  more  delicate 
bloom.  In  Richard  II,  the  tenderest  of  ill-starred 
princes  unfitted  for  a  crown  in  this  tough  world,  how 
piercing  is  the  poetic  appeal!  There  is  weakness  in 
his  lyrical  eloquence,  but  how  it  climbs  the  heavens 
of  youth!  Biron,  on  the  other  hand,  is  too  clever  by 
half  for  a  true  court,  and  needs  the  protection  of  a  love's 


SHAKESPEARE  "  331 

«* 

nunnery  to  give  his  wits  room  and  air.    In  this  morn 
ing  mood  Shakespeare  seems  like  his  own  Mercury, 
"New-lighted  on  a  heaven-kissing  hill,"  — 

so  irresponsibly  vital  is  his  gaiety,  the  mere  play  of 
his  mind  in  all  the  ways  of  beauty  and  sentiment,  of  wit 
and  laughter,  of  courage  as  quick  as  it  is  perfect,  of 
grace  in  the  action,  and  of  courtesy,  which  is  the  grace 
of  the  mind.  No  less  appealing  is  the  maturer  atmos 
phere  of  his  manlier  day:  the  grave  demeanor  of  Theseus, 
the  inviolable  peace  of  Prospero.  In  these  two  I  find 
touches  of  an  almost  Lucretian  calm  —  that  quiet, 

"Yearned  after  by  the  wisest  of  the  wise, 
Passionless  bride,  divine  tranquillity," 

but  never  so  brought  down  to  earth  as  in  Shakespeare's 
dream.  For  to  my  eyes  the  great  vision,  at  either  limit 
of  its  range,  in  its  charm  of  youth,  in  its  wisdom  of  age, 
wears  the  aspect  of  a  dream.  There  Shakespeare's 
poetry,  as  apart  from  its  dramatic  grasp  of  the  passions, 
was  at  its  ripest.  The  fabric  is  compact  of  illusion;  yet 
this  charm,  this  wisdom,  are  compelling  in  all  lands. 
You  may  sketch  the  frontiers  of  civilization  by  the 
echo  of  Shakespeare's  name.  Truth  sometimes  uses  a 
dream  as  its  best  medium:  such  is  poetic  truth.  There 
is  an  abstract  element  in  poetic  truth;  it  is  not  for  an 
age,  but  for  all  time.  Truth  in  Shakespeare  —  that 
which  greatly  distinguishes  him  —  is  poetic  truth.  It 
is  capacity  to  express  poetic  truth  that  measures  a  civi 
lization.  To  realize  life  in  the  abstract  as  noble  or 
beautiful  or  humane,  to  set  it  forth  so  with  radiance  upon 
it  —  that  is  civilization  in  the  arts.  Shakespeare  is  the 
chief  modern  example  of  this  supreme  faculty  of  man 
kind. 


332  SHAKESPEARE,   AN   ADDRESS 

Prospero,  you  remember,  is  sometimes  taken  as  a 
symbol  of  creative  genius.  He  declares  his  might: 

"graves  at  my  command 

Have  waked  their  sleepers,  op'd,  and  let  'em  forth 
By  my  so  potent  art." 

The  characters,  it  is  true,  bear  the  old  names  that  they 
once  bore  in  history  or  romance  before  their  waking;  but 
when  they  walk  a  second  time,  they  are  made  of  a  finer 
than  earthly  substance,  they  have  more  than  mortal 
speech;  they  have  suffered  an  ideal  change.  They  are 
creatures  seen  by  the  mind's  eye.  They  are  no  longer 
individuals;  a  universal  element  has  entered  into  them, 
wherein  if  any  man  look  he  sees  his  own  face.  These 
are  not  men,  but  man;  it  is  thence  that  they  are  im 
mortal  in  literature.  The  power  of  evocation,  such  as 
Prospero  describes  it,  is  the  most  convincing  proof  of 
genius.  Evocation  is  its  royal  stamp.  So  the  statue 
slept  in  marble  until  Michael  Angelo  evoked  it  from  the 
block;  so  music  sleeps  until  it  is  evoked  from  the  chords; 
so  the  Virgin's  face  is  evoked  from  the  canvas.  The 
vision  seems  magical  at  its  first  creation,  whatever  be 
the  art  through  whose  medium  it  comes. 

Art,  thus,  from  the  beginning  of  civilization  has  brought 
new  worlds  into  being.  They  blaze  out  like  intermittent 
stars  and  fade  away:  the  divine  sphere  of  Plato's  youths, 
the  world  of  Plutarch's  men,  the  thronged  region  of  the 
Renaissance  romances  whence  came  Shakespeare's  ideal 
women.  How  many  worlds  of  art  there  have  been!  how 
strange  it  is  to  fall  in  with  one  of  them  unexpectedly, 
like  some  lost  province  of  the  mind  or  some  far  country 
that  we  know  not  of!  I  remember  years  ago  at  Naples 
coming  upon  the  Pompeian  painting  of  the  ancient  time. 


SHAKESPEARE  333 

It  was  then  that  the  figures  of  the  mythological  world 
and  the  legendary  age  of  Greece  first  became  visible 
images  to  me  —  a  Theseus,  a  Jason,  a  Medea;  and  the 
Greek  past,  which  had  lain  in  my  mind  in  a  sculptural 
form  rather  than  pictorially,  took  on  the  romanc  of 
color  with  a  certain  strangeness  in  the  look  of  the  mer 
—  a  racial  strangeness.  It  was  as  if  I  had  wandered 
into  a  forgotten  chamber  of  the  world.  Art,  in  all  the 
fields  of  the  imagination,  has  many  of  these  lost  provinces 
in  its  domain,  stretching  over  the  centuries  of  man's 
various  fortunes  with  the  soul. 

There  is  something  foreign  to  us  in  any  past;  but  the 
past  is  known  to  us,  in  its  spiritual  part,  only  by  these 
evocations  embodying  the  passions  of  life.  They  are 
not  historic;  they  are  ideal.  They  are  not  individual; 
they  are  abstract.  They  are  more  or  less  intelligible 
according  to  our  own  understanding  powers;  but  taken 
together,  they  constitute  the  true  story  of  man's  life. 
As  we  review  the  record,  even  to  the  "dark  backward 
and  abysm  of  time,"  notwithstanding  all  strangeness  in 
the  aspect  of  the  vision  under  the  varying  light  of  time's 
changes,  these  evocations  of  art  in  all  its  forms  are  the 
clearest  memorial  of  the  soul's  life,  age  after  age.  It  is 
the  least  encumbered  with  unconcerning  things.  It 
writes  one  truth  large  on  the  ruins  of  time  in  each  great 
age,  whatever  be  the  city  or  the  people:  this  truth  — 
that  it  is  the  victory  in  the  field  of  the  spirit  that  decides 
a  nation's  glory. 

Shakespeare  is  the  chief  glory  of  England.  What 
Homer  was  to  the  ancient  world,  Virgil  to  imperial  Rome, 
Dante  to  medieval  Italy,  that  Shakespeare  was  to  the 
English.  His  name,  as  we  envisage  it,  breaks,  like  a 
constellation,  into  stars,  some  major  some  minor,  a  elus- 


334  SHAKESPEARE,    AN   ADDRESS 

ter  of  world-names  now  —  Hamlet,  Lear,  Othello,  Mac 
beth,  a  progeny  endless  as  Banquo's  line.  Each  charac 
ter  clothes  himself  with  a  new  world  —  as  it  were,  new 
heavens  and  a  new  earth.  What  noble  landscapes!  the 
forest  of  Arden,  the  Midsummer  Wood,  the  enchanted 
isle,  Venice,  Verona,  Rome!  In  the  art  of  evocation 
Shakespeare  held  a  master's  wand.  Scarce  any  other 
poet  seems  so  facile  and  so  various  in  creation.  It  is, 
perhaps,  an  error  of  perspective  that  gives  so  strong 
a  character  of  multiplicity  to  his  imaginative  world. 
The  drama  has  crowded  its  own  stage  in  every  poetic 
land.  There  was  much  detail  and  variety  in  Virgil,  if 
one  attends  to  them,  in  the  changeful  flow  of  the  verse. 
Shakespeare  seems  to  us  more  abundant,  too,  in  part 
because  we  are  native  to  his  world.  It  was  our  child 
hood  region.  I  began  to  know  his  work,  where  I  like 
to  think  he  first  made  acquaintance  with  himself,  in  the 
Histories.  I  first  saw  him,  I  remember,  in  that  company 
of  English  Kings,  which  is  one  of  the  bravest  panoramas 
of  history.  Every  verse  in  those  great  chronicles  vi 
brates  with  English  blood.  It  was  thus  as  a  national 
poet  that  he  first  trod  the  stage.  To  this  day  there 
is  no  such  vital  history  as  he  wrote,  be  the  scene  where 
it  may.  In  him  Holinshed  and  even  Plutarch,  noble  as 
they  are  in  their  own  speech,  leapt  to  a  life  above  life. 
But  it  is  the  Rose  of  England  that  he  most  summons 
from  the  dust.  It  is  a  baptism  of  patriotism  for  a  boy 
to  be  nursed  on  the  English  plays.  Shakespeare  was  so 
great  an  Englishman  from  the  first. 


"This  royal  throne  of  kings,  this  sceptr'd  isle, 
This  earth  of  majesty,  this  seat  of  Mars, 
This  other  Eden,  demi-paradise; 


SHAKESPEARE  335 

«* 

This  fortress  built  by  Nature  for  herself  .   .   . 

This  precious  stone  set  in  the  silver  sea,  .    .    . 

This  blessed  plot,  this  earth,  this  realm,  this  England! " 

With  what  a  flow,  with  what  a  strength,  with  what  a 
radiance  the  verse  mounts!  And  in  many  another  pas 
sage  of  martial  ardor  or  the  victorious  cry  of  arms,  one 
hears  the  living  echo  of  Agincourt  still  pulsing  along  that 
far  horizon-air.  Yet  this  was  but  the  golden  portal  of 
Shakespeare's  verse. 

The  first  incarnation  of  his  genius  was  in  history; 
the  last  incarnation,  more  powerfully  spiritual,  was  in 
fate.  There  was  an  interval  when  his  spirit  walked  in  an 
enchanted  pastoral  land,  sown  with  wild  forest  and  vistas 
of  Italy;  and  there  was  an  afterworld  of  poetic  romance, 
from  which  everything  except  pure  reality  has  been  elim 
inated,  which  was  his  farewell  to  life.  In  these  Come 
dies  of  either  group  there  was  the  glamour  of  another  age 
than  ours.  In  the  Histories  and  Tragedies  we  encounter 
a  reality  more  distinctly  of  our  world —  a  reality  seen 
with  the  seriousness  of  youth  in  the  one,  with  the 
seriousness  of  age  in  the  other.  What  gives  to  the 
Comedies  their  tranquil  atmosphere,  their  touch  of 
fantasy,  their  other-worldliness,  is  the  Renaissance,  the 
preceding  age  out  of  which  their  characters  trooped, 
bringing  their  landscape  with  them,  together  with  their 
costume,  revels,  and  speech.  The  substance  of  the 
Comedies  is  the  very  stuff  of  the  Renaissance  in  its 
iearthly  look  and  mortal  feeling.  It  is  a  world  of  acci 
dents  garbed  in  romance  —  the  world  of  the  Renaissance 
imagination.  In  the  Tragedies,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
garment  of  Time  is  stripped  off.  The  world  may  be 
Denmark  or  Scotland;  it  is  indifferent.  Cyprus  and 
Britain  are  but  names.  It  is  a  world  of  realities,  the 


336  SHAKESPEARE,   AN   ADDRESS 

world  of  the  stark  soul.  It  is  true  that  whatever  be 
the  sensible  garniture  of  the  play,  its  times,  occasions 
and  mental  modes,  the  ideas  are  still  the  ideas  of  the 
Renaissance.  Shakespeare  is,  essentially,  the  emanation 
of  the  Renaissance.  The  overflow  of  his  fame  on  the 
Continent  in  later  years  was  but  the  sequel  of  the  flood 
of  the  Renaissance  in  Western  Europe.  He  was  the 
child  of  that  great  movement,  and  marks  its  height  as 
it  penetrated  the  North  with  civilization.  That  was  his 
world-position.  It  made  him  even  a  greater  European 
than  he  was  a  great  Englishman,  and  gave  him  a  vaster 
country  than  his  nativity  conferred.  His  genius  exceeds 
his  age,  and  is  a  universal  possession;  and  this  is  because 
he  transcended  the  accidents  of  the  Renaissance,  fair 
and  far-spread  as  they  were  and  much  as  he  employed 
them;  and  in  the  great  tragedies  which  seem  at  times 
supra-mortal,  while  still  using  the  spell  of  the  ideas  that 
the  Renaissance  gave  him,  read  the  fates  of  men,  in  a 
universal  tongue. 

Every  great  movement,  nevertheless,  such  as  we  name 
universal,  has  the  limitations  of  its  arc.  Our  under 
standing  of  Shakespeare  already  depends  largely  on  the 
vitality  of  Renaissance  elements  in  our  education.  Each 
man  must  live  in  his  own  generation,  as  the  saying  is; 
but  the  generations  are  bound  together  by  the  golden 
links  of  the  great  tradition  of  civilization.  A  writer  is 
justly  called  universal  when  he  is  understood  within  the 
limits  of  his  civilization,  though  that  be  bounded  by  a 
country  or  an  age.  Seasonal  changes,  as  it  were,  take 
place  in  history,  when  there  is  practically  an  almost 
universal  death,  a  falling  of  the  foliage  of  the  tree  of 
life.  Such  were  the  intervals  between  the  ancient  and 
medieval  time,  the  medieval  and  the  modern.  The 


SHAKESPEARE  337 

immense  amount  of  commentary  on  Shakespeare  proves 
the  decay  of  his  material,  and  of  his  modes  of  thought 
and  expression,  quite  as  much  as  it  illustrates  his  pro 
fundity.  The  Renaissance  has  long  been  a  past  age,  and 
now  rapidly  recedes.  Shakespeare's  scenic  world,  at 
least,  begins  to  have  the  strangeness  of  aspect  which  I 
said  I  first  recognized  in  Pompeian  painting.  Much  in 
the  present  festivals  in  his  memory  —  reconstructions  of 
his  epoch  —  is  antiquarian.  He  has  still  his  lightning- 
stroke  at  the  moment  of  fate,  his  musical  eloquence  in 
speech,  his  lovely  settings  of  emotion;  but  the  eye  is 
blind  that  does  not  see  that  Shakespeare's  imaged  world 
is  as  remote  as 

"all  that  insolent  Greece  or  haughty  Rome 
Sent  forth,  or  since  did  from  their  ashes  come." 

Art,  I  know,  by  the  apparent  contemporaneity  of  its 
masterpieces  denies  time.  Genius  has  an  eternal  quality 
in  its  substance.  Beauty  has  ever  las  tingness.  I  walk 
through  the  museum  of  Athens,  by  the  calm  bas-reliefs 
of  the  farewells  of  death,  with  no  thought  of  antiquity. 
I  read  a  knightly  romance  as  if  the  morning  sunlight 
still  bathed  its  green  forest  and  shining  armor.  The 
violets  I  find  in  my  books  are  the  same  that  grow  in  my 
garden.  Life  is  always  a  present  moment.  But  when 
art,  like  Prospero  plucking  off  his  magic  garment,  lays 
aside  its  apparent  contemporaneity  —  that  illusion  of 
eternity  which  is  implicit  in  our  consciousness  of  the 
present  moment  —  it  resumes  mortality;  it  contracts 
decay;  it  disintegrates  into  history.  Shakespeare's  art 
suffers  the  common  fate  —  yet  with  a  difference,  with 
an  immortal  greatness.  It  grows  remote.  Strangeness 
creeps  into  its  aspect.  But  it  is  equal  to  its  peers,  and 


338  SHAKESPEARE,   AN  ADDRESS 

still  looks  at  us  with  the  unfathomed  eyes  of  Apollo  or 
of  Oedipus. 

The  changelessness  of  art  depends  upon  the  slowness 
of  change  in  man's  appreciation  of  it.  That  change  may 
be  as  gradual  as  a  summer's  day;  it  may  be  as  abrupt 
as  an  earthquake  rift;  but  finally  it  transforms  a  civiliza 
tion.  Through  whatever  secular  changes,  the  expression 
in  the  eyes  of  life  is  mystery.  Such,  too,  is  the  final 
expression  in  the  eyes  of  art.  To  me  the  expression 
seems  more  and  more  enigmatic  as  art  recedes.  The 
mystery  of  the  fates  of  men  is,  I  think,  best  expressed  in 
English  with  poetic  truth  in  the  tragedies  of  Shake 
speare,  as  the  beauty  of  life  is  best  displayed  in  his 
pastoral  comedies  and  kindred  plays.  However  time 
may  pluck  at  them,  they  still  speak  a  universal  language. 
It  is  true  that  Shakespeare  concentrated  the  Renaissance 
age,  and  that  was  another  world  than  ours;  we  see  it  in 
an  evening  light;  but  we  are  its  lineal  children  and  its 
language  is  native  to  our  minds.  No  greater  age  ever 
robed  humanity  in  a  shining  garment.  The  garment 
may  fade,  but  the  soul  remembers  long  its  great  epochs 
and  makes  of  their  master-spirits  its  sacred  guardians; 
for  the  unseen  commonwealth,  the  true  State,  is  spiritual, 
and  has  spiritual  guardians. 

Art  —  and  I  always  mean  to  include  in  the  general 
term  the  fine  art  of  literature  —  art,  so  understood,  is 
the  solvent  of  the  nations.  That  is  how  Shakespeare 
came  to  be  a  great  European.  The  Renaissance  liber 
ated  him  from  nationality  in  a  provincial  sense.  He  was 
one  of  the  fathers,  and  is  now  a  chief  pillar,  of  the 
invisible  republic  of  letters,  or  intellectual  State,  which 
is  the  core  of  modern  civilization.  Impalpable  as  any 
ideal  commonwealth  of  old  thinkers,  this  State  is  a 


SHAKESPEARE  339 

9 

spiritual  reality.  Shakespeare  helped  materially  to  shape 
its  present  form.  The  community  of  scholars  in  medie 
val  days  rested  on  a  universal  language,  Latin.  The 
Renaissance  broke  the  bonds  of  that  great  tongue,  rich 
with  the  accumulations  of  thought  and  knowledge 
through  the  centuries  of  its  millennial  career;  but  not 
before  a  common  mold  of  thought  had  been  established 
in  the  diverse  nations,  and  mental  intercommunication 
between  them  assured.  Latinity  receded  from  the  world 
in  all  forms,  especially  in  language;  but  art  still  made  a 
universal  appeal  in  so  far  as  it  spoke  directly  to  the 
senses  in  painting  and  sculpture,  architecture  and  music; 
and  though  poetic  art  uses  a  screen  of  language  and 
approaches  the  senses  through  the  mind,  its  creations, 
when  they  become  visible  through  the  screen  of  lan 
guage,  are  found  to  be  woven  of  the  same  original  stuff 
that  the  sister  arts  employ. 

There  is  this  kinship  and  essential  identity  in  all  the 
arts.  Shakespeare,  indeed,  employed  his  special  tongue, 
the  English,  with  a  superb  touch  on  its  forms  of  expres 
sion;  but  far  greater  than  any  linguistic  skill  was  that 
creative  might  with  which,  time  and  again,  he  modeled 
a  world  of  the  universal  mind,  so  compact  of  loveliness, 
sweetness,  or  grandeur  that  the  words  are  but  its  initial 
harmonies.  It  is  in  this  world  of  the  mind  that  he  is  so 
great  a  master.  Therefore  other  realms  than  England 
quickly  stripped  the  screen  of  language  from  his  work 
and  made  him  European  by  their  diverse  tongues  as  he 
already  embodied  the  intellectual  fires  and  romantic 
horizons  of  the  general  age.  He  contributed  powerfully, 
by  his  sheer  inner  worth  and  charm  as  a  poet,  to  the 
transfusion  of  national  cultures  which  has  long  charac 
terized  western  civilization,  has  made  its  nations  intelleo 


340  SHAKESPEARE,   AN   ADDRESS 

tually  hospitable,  and  has  most  continued  the  inheritance 
of  that  great  tradition  which  poured  originally  from 
antiquity,  and  through  the  Renaissance  overspread 
Europ?.  It  is  thus,  however  slowly,  that  the  world  is 
unified.  The  republic  of  letters  has  no  frontiers. 

"Greece  and  her  foundations  are 
Built  below  the  tides  of  war." 

\ 
It  is  a  spiritual  State,  and  bears  in  its  hands  "olives  of 

endless  peace." 

Shakespeare,  through  embodying  the  Renaissance,  was 
thus  a  main  force  in  "humanizing,"  in  the  scholarly 
sense,  the  modern  age.  By  the  brilliancy  of  his  genius 
he  conciliated  nations.  This  was  to  serve  humanity 
greatly.  It  should  not  be  forgotten  on  his  anniversary. 
But  the  effect  of  Shakespeare  historically  on  world-cur 
rents  is  less  to  us  to-day  than  his  elemental  magic  in 
the  ways  of  genius.  Genius  is  known  by  its  works. 
There  it  is  obvious  to  all;  but  who  would  dare  analyze 
its  creative  light?  I  only  venture  the  suggestion  that 
one  characteristic  of  genius  in  its  works  is  immediate 
vision  —  what  is  sometimes  called  intuitive  vision  — 
and  that  one  measure  of  its  force  is  the  intensity  of  the 
vision.  Genius  in  its  creative  works  does  not  proceed 
by  calculation,  by  any  adaption  of  means  to  ends,  or  by 
any  mode  of  mechanical  processes.  It  uses  neither  fore 
sight  nor  afterthought;  its  works  are  made  at  a  single 
cast.  That  is  why  I  have  spoken  of  its  works  in  the 
arts  as  "evocations."  The  summons  is  instantaneous, 
and  instantly  obeyed.  Genius  does  not  proceed  as  if 
by  mental  logic  from  step  to  step;  it  does  not  reason 
things  out;  it  makes  no  use  of  analysis.  It  sees  its 
object  as  if  by  revelation,  as  an  image  disclosed.  It 


SHAKESPEARE  341 

resembles  rather,  in  its  operation,  the  processes  of  vital 
growth.  However  long  may  be  the  unconscious  prepa 
ration  of  nature,  the  plant  blossoms  in  a  night  —  a  single 
unguessed  and  exquisite  bloom.  The  vision  of  genius 
comes  as  a  whole  and  instantaneous,  as  a  face  floats  into 
the  air  of  memory. 

There  is  this  immediacy  in  the  creations  of  art  as  they 
arise  in  the  mind.  So  little  are  they  foreseen  that  they 
are  always  a  surprise.  So  little  are  they  planned  that 
they  often  puzzle  their  own  creator  to  interpret  them. 
So  little  are  they  indebted  to  ordinary  reason  that 
poets  have  always  called  them  "inspirations."  They 
do  not  spring  from  observation,  however  long  or 
profound.  Never  do  they  repeat  any  experience  of  the 
actual.  They  are  free  from  the  world  of  nature.  These 
creations  have  a  world  of  their  own  —  a  mental  world. 
Shakespeare's  visible  world  is  in  "the  mind's  eye."  The 
mental  world  is  a  true  world,  like  nature;  but  it  contains 
greater  reality.  Balzac  used  to  say,  turning  from  his 
callers  to  his  books  —  "Now  for  real  people."  A  uni 
versal  element  enters  into  the  mental  world.  It  is  the 
sphere  of  poetic  truth,  Shakespeare's  world.  It  was  the 
place  of  his  vision  of  life.  Nothing  of  Hamlet,  Lear, 
Othello,  Macbeth,  was  ever  actual  in  experience;  nothing 
such  as  their  fatal  histories  was  ever  observed.  The  truth 
their  souls  contain  is  purely  mental;  it  is  poetic  truth. 
Shakespeare  presents  truth  in  a  vision  of  that  world 
which  exists  only  in  "the  mind's  eye."  Yet  who  does 
not  perceive  that  his  world  is  more  "real  than  living 
man,"  and  unveils  the  fates  of  men  with  a  revealing 
range  and  search  beyond  nature?  It  is  here  that  genius 
inhabits  and  creates. 

In  this  poetic  world  Shakespeare,  as  he  matured,  de- 


342  SHAKESPEARE,   AN   ADDRESS 

veloped  in  his  genius  a  penetration  and  intensity  that 
seem  not  only  beyond  nature,  but  at  times  beyond  mor 
tal  power.  It  is  in  the  four  great  tragedies  that  he  most 
impresses  us  so.  Tragedy  is  for  youth.  Nature  draws 
a  film  over  the  eyes  of  youth  which  tempers  the  sight  to 
that  fierce  light;  but  for  older  eyes, 

"Grown  dim  with  gazing  on  the  pilot-stars," 

it  is  too  strong  a  ray.  Even  in  youth  one  sometimes 
lays  down  the  book.  The  mind  turns  from  the  four 
tragedies  to  the  earlier  "moonlight  and  music  and  feel 
ing"  of  the  charmed  meadows  and  woods  and  cities  of 
the  pastoral  plays  and  their  kin,  much  as  Tennyson 
turned  from  Milton's  angel  hosts  to  delights  of  Paradise: 

"Me  rather  all  that  bowery  loneliness, 
And  brooks  of  Eden  mazily  murmuring, 
And  bloom  profuse  and  cedar  arches 
Charm." 

So,  too,  one  turns  from  the  "Inferno"  of  Dante  to  the 
sweetness  and  glory  of  the  "Paradise."  The  genius  of  the 
tragedies  is,  indeed,  more  transcendent;  but  there  is 
greater  fascination  in  beauty  than  in  terror.  It  may 
be  noticed  that  the  tragedies  are  full  of  vision,  not  doc 
trine.  No  judgment  is  passed  on  what  is  revealed.  It 
is  as  if  the  poet  said,  "Look,  and  pass."  This  is  what  I 
have  called  the  world  of  the  stark  soul.  At  times  it 
scarcely  suffers  words.  The  pastoral  comedies,  on  the 
other  hand,  are  garmented  with  lovely  phrase.  They 
are  not  free  from  melancholy  shades,  as  at  the  close  of 
"Love's  Labor's  Lost."  "The  scene  begins  to  cloud," 
says  Biron,  but  it  is  only  with  natural  grief.  For  the 
most  part  the  tragic  lot  of  man  is  in  the  background,  if 
it  intrude  at  all.  We  know  the  sadness  of  Antonio,  in 


SHAKESPEARE  343 

the  "Merchant  of  Venice,"  but  not  what  secrets  of  mor 
tality  it  concealed. 

In  the  pastoral  comedies,  as  I  somewhat  inaptly  term 
them  from  their  sentiment  rather  than  from  their  land 
scape,  we  are  in  the  old,  almost  antique  world  of  romance. 
Romanticism  had  its  nest  in  Greece.  We  feel  its  nativity 
in  such  a  play  as  "Pericles."  The  chance  adventures  of 
travel,  the  outlandish  regions,  the  surprising  incidents, 
the  shipwrecks,  the  general  sense  of  a  roving  world  — 
in  brief,  a  thousand  details  of  composition  —  remind 
us  how  recently  the  drama  had  emerged  from  chaos  of 
romantic  fiction.  The  world  of  Shakespeare  is  full  of 
this  variety  in  detail,  like  a  book  of  the  Italian  Renais 
sance,  and  with  the  variety  there  blended  an  omnipresent 
strangeness  equally  characterizing  that  age  of  which  the 
very  breath  was  mental  discovery.  The  human  spirit 
was  like  an  immigrant  in  a  new  country:  anything  might 
happen  there.  The  tradition  of  the  past  is  felt  in  Shake 
speare's  story,  both  in  its  materials  and  its  methods  of 
narration;  but  it  is  a  past  whose  breath  of  life  was  ro 
mance,  and  awoke  in  Shakespeare's  mind  as  in  a  world 
about  to  be  born.  Shakespeare  was  great  as  an  English 
man;  he  was  greater  as  an  emanation  of  the  Renaissance 
which  he  drew  into  himself;  but,  greatest  of  all,  he  was 
the  blazing  star  of  romanticism,  when  its  unearthly  beauty 
took  possession  of  the  European  world. 

It  is  characteristic  of  genius  when  it  is  greatest,  to 
include  a  broad  arc  of  man's  progress  in  its  own  career. 
Thus  practically  an  entire  cycle  of  romantic  art  may 
be  observed  in  Shakespeare's  drama.  It  began  in  archa 
ism  1  it  ended  in  a  climax  of  perfection.  It  is  multiple 
and  composite,  characterized  by  an  incessant  change 
of  theme  and  heterogeneity  of  material.  It  has  the  mis- 


344  SHAKESPEARE,   AN   ADDRESS 

cellaneousness  as  well  as  the  large  horizons  of  the  Eliza 
bethan  mind.  It  is  a  drama  as  romantic  in  method  as 
in  subject.  Exuberance  is  the  quality  of  the  creative 
genius  that  produced  it,  and  infinite  variety  marks  its 
works.  His  genius  is  ever  companioned  by  a  wandering 
spirit.  Consider  the  many  disguises  in  which  he  uses  the 
device  of  the  episode,  as,  for  instance,  the  play  within 
the  play,  the  introduced  dance  or  masque,  the  tale,  the 
soliloquy,  or  more  subtly  in  the  brief  idyllic  passages  that 
are  for  poetry  what  "purple  patches'7  are  for  rhetoric. 
Yet,  however  far  or  often  genius  may  accompany  this 
wandering  elf,  it  keeps  within  the  magic  limit  which 
holds  all  in  true  unity.  This  romantic  surface,  like  a 
phosphorescence  playing  over  the  dramas,  is  an  incessant 
and  growing  phenomenon  of  Shakespeare's  art.  Not  less 
obvious  is  the  unity  of  feeling  in  them  —  what  is  some 
times  called  "keeping"  —  which  is  an  essential  part  of 
romantic  unity,  and  which  operates  with  such  force  in 
Shakespeare  as  to  place  each  of  his  plays  in  a  world  of 
its  own. 

The  singularity  of  his  genius  is  that  while  expressing 
itself  so  admirably  that  at  each  new  disclosure  it  seems 
to  have  arrived  at  perfection  in  its  kind,  it  grows 
nobler,  grander,  or  sweeter  at  each  new  creation.  It 
belongs  to  most  of  us  to  seize  on  some  single  aspect  of 
art,  and  to  cleave  to  it.  Taste,  by  a  reversion  of  type, 
may  recur  to  the  archaic  and  primitive,  especially  under 
the  impulse  of  a  preference  for  simplicity.  It  may,  at 
least,  without  going  to  such  lengths,  require  that  there 
be  only  few  elements  in  high  beauty  —  a  single  bloom  in 
an  isolated  vase,  or,  as  the  custom  now  often  is  in  mu 
seums,  one  supreme  statue  in  a  room  dedicated  to  it. 
Taste,  such  as  this,  finds  romantic  art  too  distracting 


SHAKESPEARE  345 

in  theme,  too  overwhelming  in  feeling.  The  tragedies 
and  later  romances  have  too  much  depth  of  thought, 
too  much  richness  of  decoration,  too  much  mystery 
(whether  of  terror  or  beauty),  for  minds  of  such  a 
caliber.  At  most  they  find  pleasure  in  the  golden  come 
dies  that  sprang  to  light  before  Shakespeare's  genius 
reached  its  climax  of  power. 

These  comedies,  which  for  many  are  the  center  of 
delight,  if  not  of  worship,  in  Shakespeare's  work,  have  a 
smoothness  and  softness  of  execution  and  effect,  some 
what  Victorian  in  the  quality  of  their  art,  if  I  may  ven 
ture  to  say  so,  somewhat  Tennysonian  in  exquisiteness 
of  impression:  not  that  Shakespeare  resembles  Tenny 
son  in  style,  but  there  is  a  kinship  of  genius  between 
them  at  that  stage  of  Shakespeare.  This  period  of 
smoothness  and  softness  in  art  marks  a  point  of  per 
fection  which  lasts  but  a  moment.  Art  roughens  again, 
in  mood  and  act,  as  it  bends  to  the  new  age.  There  is 
a  Michael  Angelo  for  a  Rafael  then;  or  the  Pergamon 
marbles  replace  the  Parthenon.  It  may  be  for  better 
or  for  worse,  but  the  new  age  will  have  its  way.  The 
peculiarity  in  Shakespeare's  case  is  that  he  himself 
brought  in  the  new  age,  with  the  tragedies  and  the  last 
romances.  Though  Webster  and  Ford  followed  him, 
he  had  already  struck  the  hour.  The  cycle  of  romantic 
art  in  the  drama  was  complete,  though  there  might  be 
a  long  after-play  of  its  fires. 

Shakespeare  not  only  embodied  the  spirit  of  romantic 
art  in  his  own  age;  he  heralded  a  greater  movement 
in  time.  Art  has  a  double  visage:  it  looks  before  and 
after.  Romance  is  its  forward-looking  face.  The  germ 
of  growth  is  in  romanticism.  Formalism,  on  the  other 
hand,  consolidates  tradition;  gleans  what  has  been 


346  SHAKESPEARE,   AN   ADDRESS 

gained  and  makes  it  facile  to  the  hand  or  the  mind; 
economizes  the  energy  of  genius.  Formalism  supports 
feebler  spirits,  directs,  and  restrains.  Formalism  is  a 
backward  looking  mode,  and  archaic  with  respect  to  its 
own  time.  Romance  plows  in  the  field  of  the  future 
^as  in  an  eternal  spring.  It  is  true  that  the  reaction  from 
Shakespeare's  art  was  extreme  in  England.  An  intellec 
tual,  rather  than  a  poetic,  age  succeeded.  But  when  the 
earth  began  to  expand  again  with  an  April  season  of  the 
world,  how  the  seed  of  romanticism  sprang  everywhere, 
like  grass,  as  if  it  were  life's  natural  verdure!  Romantic 
art  did  not  then,  indeed,  put  forth  one  all-embracing 
genius,  like  Shakespeare;  it  required  a  Byron,  a  Tenny 
son,  and  a  Browning  to  complete  the  cycle  in  our  age 
just  past;  but  the  voice  of  the  modern  triad  is  that  of 
romance  once  more  a-wing  for  a  supreme  flight.  The 
Renaissance  found  a  new  birth  in  Keats  and  Shelley 
and  many  another;  and  though  romanticism,  spreading 
through  a  wide  circle  of  art  and  thought,  seems  less 
exclusively,  less  predominantly  literary,  in  that  age  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  it  gave  breath  to  a  whole  spiritual 
movement.  Its  leaders  were  not  more  indebted  to  Shake 
speare  than  to  the  other  great  spiritual  guardians,  as  I 
have  called  them,  of  the  international  State  that  exists 
invisibly  at  the  core  of  modern  civilization;  but  they  are 
indebted  to  him,  as  one  of  those  guardians,  there  sitting 
with  his  peers. 

Shakespeare  has  been  praised  in  English  more  than 
anything  mortal  except  poetry  itself.  Fame  exhausts 
thought  in  his  eulogy.  "The  myriad-minded  one"  is 
his  best  designation.  Wholly  apart,  however,  from  his 
extraordinary  mental  inclusiveness,  the  comprehensive 
grasp  and  intuitive  penetration  of  his  visionary  genius, 


SHAKESPEARE  347 

such  that  he  seemed  to  create  worlds  of  being  like 
separate  stars  —  and  apart  also  from  the  substance  of 
wisdom  which  the  dramas  contained,  he  was  especially 
wonderful,  let  me  add,  as  a  man  of  letters  merely  —  that 
is,  as  a  man  accustomed  to  express  ideas  in  written  words. 
An  excess  of  linguistic  power  over  language,  equally  with 
an  excess  of  metrical  power  over  verse,  characterized  the 
latest  plays.  A  marvelous  power  of  expression  over 
language  often  distinguishes  genius;  but  Shakespeare  in 
his  phrases  seems  independent  of  the  bonds  of  language 
as  of  the  bonds  of  meter.  But  he  was  something  more 
and  other  than  literary.  He  was  a  wonderful  example 
of  the  human  spirit,  and  in  his  creative  power  affects 
one  with  a  sense  of  the  inexplicable,  like  a  natural 
force.  Above  all,  he  was  intensely  human  in  his  spiritu 
ality;  that  is  why  he  is  so  often  thought  unspiritual. 
Hence  he  gathers  the  world  under  the  spell  of  his  genius. 
It  is  thus  that  he  is  beheld  at  last  as  an  arch-leader  in 
the  world  of  the  spirit  of  man  —  one  of  those  few  who, 
however  distant  in  country  or  epoch,  are,  after  centuries, 
the  true  "sons  of  memory." 

I  have  set  forth  Shakespeare,  you  perceive,  immortal 
as  he  is,  in  the  light  of  an  historic  world  lapsing  now  into 
the  shadows  of  time.  I  remember  once,  when  I  was 
sailing  over  the  Aegean  Sea  northward  from  Athens,  I 
saw  what  was  afterward  for  me  a  long-recollected  scene. 
Naturally  my  eyes  were  fastened  on  the  Parthenon,  visible 
from  afar.  Shores  and  promontories  slowly  became  ob 
scure  in  the  growing  distance.  At  last  nothing  remained 
except  the  temple  seen  against  the  setting  sun.  Every 
touch  of  earth  had  departed  from  it  —  a  vision  as  it  were 
in  the  golden  west.  I  thought  how  some  young  Ionian, 
approaching,  thus  saw  it  under  the  dawn,  ages  since, 


348  SHAKESPEARE,   AN   ADDRESS 

with  the  glint  on  Athene's  lifted  spear  —  first  a  gleam, 
then  the  temple,  then  the  "darling  city."  I  saw  it  in 
my  departure,  garmented  with  light,  a  ruin  alone  in  the 
sun.  I  was  to  me  then  the  symbol  of  antique  beauty. 
It  is  so  that  I  see  Shakespeare's  world  in  the  light  of  a 
receding  age. 


THE  SALEM  ATHENAEUM 


An  address  before  the  Salem  Athenaeum 
at  the  formal  opening  of  Plummer  Hall, 
October  2,  1907 


THE  SALEM  ATHENAEUM 

MR.  PRESIDENT: 

I  am  accustomed  to  say  that  Essex  County  is  the 
most  blessed  spot  on  the  earth's  surface,  for  ordi 
nary  human  life.  If  I  am  pressed  for  some  explanation, 
I  own  that  possibly  filial  affection  enters  into  my  judg 
ment,  but  that  it  seems  to  me  that  material  comfort 
is  more  widely  distributed  here  than  elsewhere  through 
the  whole  population,  and  especially  that  it  is  the  best 
place  to  bring  up  a  boy  in.  It  is  not  the  wealthiest  of 
communities;  it  is  not  the  most  intellectual;  it  is  the 
home  neither  of  art  nor  manners.  In  these  respects 
New  York,  Paris  and  Italy  surpass  it.  It  is  not  the  most 
beautiful  in  scenery  nor  the  most  suave  in  atmosphere. 
I  should  hesitate  to  say  that  it  is  the  most  civilized. 
The  marks  of  civilization  are  hard  to  name.  Commonly 
each  nation  or  era  points  to  its  own  characteristic 
achievement  as  the  mark  of  civilization:  Tyre  to  its 
wealth,  Athens  to  letters  and  the  arts,  Rome  and  Eng 
land  to  government.  But  wealth  has  flourished  in  all 
civilizations,  whether  as  flocks  and  herds,  hoards  of 
jewels  and  coins,  trade  privilege,  stock-certificates,  with 
out  much  changing  its  character  in  any  age  or  environ 
ment;  letters  and  arts  appear  and  disappear  like  the 
cities  they  illuminate  and  adorn;  spiritual  lives  have 
been  lived  in  the  midst  of  revolting  conditions  of  blood, 
brutality  and  ignorance  in  many  lands  and  times,  capital 
inventions  were  made  ages  ago  in  China,  and  the  most 

351 


352  THE   SALEM   ATHENAEUM 

vaunted  of  modern  inventions  hardly  equals  in  dignity 
and  power  that  old  invention  of  the  alphabet.  It  is 
truly  hard  to  say  in  what  civilization  consists,  if  one 
looks  at  the  long  career  of  men  justly.  Yet,  obeying  the 
universal  influence  which  guides  men's  thoughts  on  this 
matter  along  the  lines  of  their  own  efforts,  in  this  epoch 
of  democracy  it  has  seemed  to  me  that  one  mark  of  ad 
vancing  civilization  now  is  the  degree  to  which  we  suc 
ceed  in  obviating  the  natural  or  artificial  inequalities 
in  the  condition  of  men  at  large;  or,  in  a  word,  one  meas 
ure  of  our  own  civilization  is  our  power  to  approach 
social  justice.  It  is  no  part  of  my  own  dream  to  divide 
equally  the  material  goods  of  men;  but,  a  free  career 
being  left  to  personal  initiative  and  its  rewards,  it  does 
seem  to  me  that  such  a  portion  of  material  wealth  in 
the  community  should  be  set  aside  as  to  secure  to  all 
citizens  equal  ownership  in  and  benefit  from  the  great 
fruits  of  civilization,  which  should  be  national  and  not 
personal  possessions.  I  mean,  for  example,  a  public 
right  to  the  benefits  of  science,  as  instanced  in  medi 
cine  or  engineering  and  illustrated  by  public  hospitals 
and  water-supply;  or  to  the  benefits  of  elementary  or 
higher  knowledge  as  illustrated  in  public  schools  and 
colleges;  or  to  the  benefits  of  art  as  illustrated  in  muse 
ums,  parks,  monuments,  and  all  that  adorns  a  city  and 
softens  the  life  of  its  people.  That  is  a  fortunate  city 
in  which  the  universal  human  wants  are  rationally  met 
or  alleviated  by  public  means,  so  that  its  citizens  feel 
an  equal  ownership,  not  in  the  material  accumulation 
of  wealth,  but  in  the  accumulation  of  civilizing  power 
in  the  community  to  better  the  condition  of  men  —  to 
secure  health,  intelligence,  enjoyment,  relief,  opportunity, 
within  the  limits  of  what  life  allows.  Such  a  community 


THE   SALEM   ATHENAEUM  353 

puts  in  the  breast  of  every  man  born  into  it  the  most 
precious  of  all  human  possessions  —  hope.  I  wish  that 
the  mark  of  citizenship  were  less  exclusively  thought  of 
as  the  right  to  vote,  and  thereby  share  in  government, 
which  (as  we  all  know)  is  often  a  very  illusory  thing; 
but  rather  as  the  right  to  share  in  the  common  good, 
secured  by  public  wealth  —  the  good  of  education,  health, 
recreation,  the  many  forms  of  public  property  and  ex 
penditure,  of  which  the  fruition  is  diffused  through  every 
home  like  daily  dividends.  There  is  little  need  to  expand 
upon  a  theme  which,  more  or  less  clearly  understood, 
is  the  ideal  of  all  of  us,  and  one  that  we  inherit;  but  I 
desire  to  make  plain  why  it  is  that  I  merely  hesitated  to 
describe  our  county  as,  in  the  line  of  our  efforts,  an 
uncommonly  civilized  spot.  Surely  there  are  few  places 
on  the  earth's  surface  so  democratically  peopled,  in  the 
best  sense;  few,  where  under  the  operation  of  rightful 
taxation  and  private  beneficence  the  public  wealth  has 
brought  the  goods  of  modern  life,  the  fruits  of  progress, 
so  within  reach  of  whosoever  will  to  take  them  and  home 
to  every  door;  few  where  the  accumulated  civilizing  power 
of  the  community  is  a  possession  held  in  common. 
This  city  is  excellently  supplied  by  its  public  institutions 
and  otherwise  with  the  means  of  storing  and  communi 
cating  this  wealth;  and  it  is  especially  distinguished  by 
the  little  group  of  institutions  of  the  scientific  and  liter 
ary  life,  seldom  found  so  happily  united  —  the  Athenaeum, 
the  Essex  Institute,  the  East  India  Marine  Society,  and 
the  Peabody  Academy,  which  have  grown  up  together, 
and,  as  it  were,  in  the  same  shell.  They  are  the  crown 
of  the  city,  and  stand  to  it  in  the  place  of  a  University, 
and  one  of  the  best  kind,  one  not  founded,  but  native 
to  the  city,  growing  out  of  its  own  past,  body  of  its  body, 


354  THE    SALEM    ATHENAEUM 

and  soul  of  its  own  soul.    It  is  a  remarkable  and  in 
structive  phenomenon  in  American  culture. 

What  is  most  useful  to  observe  is  that  our  democracy, 
our  socialism,  our  use  of  the  public  wealth  for  the  com 
mon  good  as  a  matter  of  just  right,  is  not  a  brand-new 
thing,  something  theoretic  and  reformatory;  but  is  our 
tradition  from  the  past;  it  is  home-sprung  and  home-bred. 
These  various  societies  are  rooted  in  old  days.  To  in 
quire  into  their  history  is  like  excavating  ancient  cities; 
under  each  we  find  a  predecessor,  sometimes  more  than 
one.  You  are  familiar  with  the  origins  of  the  Athe 
naeum,  and  I  shall  only  touch  upon  them  to  illustrate 
other  matters.  It  is  proper  to  recall  the  great  name  of 
Franklin,  whose  luminous  genius  was  the  ruling  star 
of  the  second  age  of  the  colonies,  when,  in  the  growth 
of  its  secular  and  commercial  life,  the  lines  of  the  nation 
began  to  be  molded.  Various  as  were  his  works,  and 
marvelous  as  was  his  forecasting  wisdom,  it  is  doubtful, 
in  view  of  the  results,  whether  any  of  his  minor  plans 
gathered  such  increase  of  power,  as  it  grew,  as  did  his 
founding  of  the  subscription  Social  Library  in  Phila 
delphia,  which  may  fairly  be  looked  on  as  the  father  of 
the  public  libraries  of  the  United  States.  The  principle 
of  associated  effort  was  dear  to  him,  and  in  this  case  it 
was  put  to  great  uses.  The  Salem  Social  Library  was 
founded  in  1760,  and  was  the  third  in  the  country.  It 
is  true  that  this  was  a  full  generation  after  Franklin,  but 
things  moved  slowly  in  those  days.  The  point  of  interest 
is  that  here  was  the  first  place  in  Massachusetts  where 
Franklin's  idea  germinated.  A  still  greater  distinction, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  belongs  to  the  second  of  the  two  libra 
ries  that  underlay  the  Athenaeum,  that  called  the  Phil 
osophical  Library,  which  was  at  that  time,  I  suppose, 


THE    SALEM    ATHENAEUM  355 

unique  in  the  country,  and  whose  influence  was  one  of 
the  springs  of  the  scientific  studies  that  have  distin 
guished  this  city.  It  was,  as  you  all  know,  a  prize  of 
war;  but  I  do  not  find  in  your  records  any  precise  ac 
count  of  its  capture. 

It  was  on  the  homeward  voyage  from  Bilboa  that  the 
ship  "Pilgrim,"  Captain  Joseph  Robinson  commanding, 
hailing  from  Beverly,  after  a  successful  privateering 
cruise,  fell  in,  on  January  5,  1781,  with  the  British  ship, 
"Mars."  The  opponents  were  not  unevenly  matched. 
The  "Pilgrim"  was  of  two  hundred  tons  burden,  and  car 
ried  sixteen  nine-pound  cannon  and  a  crew  of  one  hun 
dred  and  forty  men;  the  "Mars"  was  frigate-built,  four 
hundred  and  fifty  tons  mounting  twenty-four  carriage 
guns,  and  manned  by  a  crew  of  one  hundred  men.  The 
combat  lasted  over  three  hours,  and  is  described  as  one 
of  the  most  severe  and  desperate  sea-fights  of  the  Revo 
lution;  at  the  end,  both  ships  being  much  shattered  and 
disabled  and  the  "Mars"  having  lost  her  captain  and  five 
men  killed,  with  eighteen  wounded,  victory  rested  with 
the  Americans.  The  "Pilgrim"  reached  Beverly,  Febru 
ary  9,  and  was  followed  by  her  prize  on  the  i3th.  The 
ship  and  cargo,  having  been  duly  condemned,  were  adver 
tised  for  sale  April  1 1 ;  but  owing  to  a  severe  storm  the 
auction  was  postponed  until  April  17.  It  was  at  this 
sale  that,  with  the  friendly  co-operation  of  Andrew  and 
John  Cabot,  owners,  the  philosophical  library  belonging 
to  Dr.  Richard  Kirwan  of  Dublin,  was  sold  for  a  small 
sum  to  the  group  of  gentlemen  and  scholars,  inspired 
by  the  Rev.  Joseph  Willard  of  Beverly,  who  formed 
themselves  into  a  small  association  for  its  common  use. 
It  was  kept  in  the  minister's  house  near  the  Common,  in 
a  room  which  was  in  my  boyhood  still  known  as  "Mr. 


356  THE    SALEM   ATHENAEUM 

Willard's  study,"  and  where  —  and  the  memory  makes 
me  feel  less  a  stranger  here  —  I  used  often  to  play  as  a 
child.  It  was  a  remarkable  body  of  men  who  gathered 
in  that  room  to  form  the  association.  We  are  apt  to 
think  of  those  old  elders  as  only  less  forbidding  in  their 
lives  and  persons  than  in  their  portraits,  and  doubtless 
they  were  very  solemn  folk;  but  by  the  time  of  the 
Revolution  other  ranks  of  life  had  mixed  with  the  old 
clergy,  and  what  strikes  us  in  this  particular  gathering 
was  the  infusion  of  learning  and  science  in  the  circle. 
It  was  less  a  clerical  than  a  scholarly  group;  and  it  is 
surprising  to  find  on  the  obscure  lane  of  a  small  colonial 
town,  such  as  Beverly  then  was,  a  group  of  seven  men 
gathered  in  the  hard  times  of  the  Revolution  to  advance 
the  cause  of  science  in  its  higher  forms,  and  to  use  the 
opportunity  that  the  chance  of  war  had  cast  their  way 
to  prosper  the  great  works  of  peace.  It  is  remarkable, 
too,  to  find  such  distinction  in  the  group.  Joseph  Wil- 
lard,  the  mover  of  the  enterprise,  was  afterward  the  first 
president  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences 
and  also  president  of  Harvard  College;  Joshua  Fisher, 
also  of  Beverly,  was  the  first  president  of  the  Massa 
chusetts  Medical  Society;  Manassah  Cutler,  of  Ipswich, 
besides  other  claims  to  distinction,  was  the  founder  of 
the  State  of  Ohio.  The  remaining  four,  Barnard,  Prince, 
Holyoke  and  Orne,  of  this  city,  are  too  well  known  in 
its  traditions  to  require  any  reminder  here  of  their  honor 
able  careers.  This  little  club  of  learned  men,  with  addi 
tions  from  time  to  time  of  other  eminent  names,  con 
tinued  the  library  and  finally  handed  it  on  to  the  Athe 
naeum.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  war  they  offered  an 
indemnity  to  the  original  owner,  Dr.  Kirwan,  who  de 
clined  it  with  an  expression  of  his  happiness  in  finding 


THE   SALEM    ATHENAEUM  357 

that  his  library  had  met  with  such  good  fortune  and 
served  so  excellent  a  use.  To  me  this  little  story  of  how 
the  scientific  library  reached  our  coasts  is  a  very  pic 
turesque  incident  of  the  Revolution;  the  gallant  sea- 
fight,  the  circle  in  Mr.  Willard's  study,  the  offer  of  rec 
ompense  make  up  a  complete  and  romantic  tale;  it 
carries  off  the  honors  of  both  war  and  peace. 

I  will  not  enter  further  into  details  of  the  history 
of  the  Athenaeum.  They  are  well  known  to  you;  but 
on  such  an  occasion  as  this  it  is  proper,  and  belongs  to 
filial  piety,  to  refresh  our  minds  with  the  remembrance 
of  our  debt  to  the  past  and  to  recall  its  character.  The 
library  thus  founded  on  the  one  hand  after  the  example 
of  Franklin  and  on  the  other  by  the  ardor  for  science, 
with  additions  made  by  a  new  subscription,  became 
nearly  a  century  ago  the  Athenaeum.  It  may  truly  be 
described  as  one  of  the  earliest  hearths  of  culture  in 
our  country;  and  its  destiny  was  worthy  of  its  origins. 
It  is  a  great  distinction  for  this  library  that  it  sheltered 
in  their  youth  two  of  the  first-born  men  of  genius  in  this 
country  —  one,  foremost  in  science,  and  one  foremost  in 
literature.  Here  Nathaniel  Bowditch  found  at  once  the 
broad  horizons  of  science,  and  learned  its  dignity,  its 
compass  and  methods  in  the  most  effective  way  in  which 
they  can  appeal  to  the  imagination  and  apprehension  of 
youth,  by  the  mere  sight  of  great  monuments  of  its 
literature  in  books;  here  he  made  his  mind  exact,  search 
ing  and  practical,  and  informed  with  true  learning.  He 
was  aware  of  his  debt,  the  modes  of  which  are  easily 
seen,  and  he  remembered  it  throughout  his  life,  and  at 
his  death  by  a  grateful  bequest.  Here  Hawthorne,  in 
the  bitter  years  of  his  solitude  found  society,  and  in  his 
poverty  the  riches  that  neither  moth  nor  rust  corrupt 


358  THE   SALEM   ATHENAEUM 

and  that  pass  not  away.  If  the  modes  of  his  debt  are 
less  plain  in  his  works,  that  belongs  to  the  secret  of 
the  alchemy  of  genius  which  is  wonderful  in  its  processes 
and  transformations.  He  must  have  begun  to  read  here 
shortly  after  his  return  from  college,  if  not  earlier,  for 
his  family  had  a  connection  with  the  library.  One  of 
his  name  was  a  founder  of  the  Athenaeum;  his  aunt,  Mary 
Manning,  had  a  share  in  1827,  and  the  next  year  trans- 
fered  it  to  him,  and  he  remained  a  proprietor  until  Feb 
ruary  21,  1839,  when  he  removed  to  Boston;  and  during 
his  second  residence  in  Salem  he  again  became  a  proprie 
tor  for  nearly  three  years,  from  January  6,  1848,  to 
November  29,  1850,  when  with  the  winning  of  his  fame 
he  left  his  native  town  to  be  the  citizen  of  his  country 
forever.  The  lists  of  his  borrowings  from  the  library 
are  still  in  existence,  and  have  been  printed;  but  the 
closest  scrutiny  shows  little  direct  obligation  in  his  tales 
and  romances  to  the  books  he  read.  He  was  a  discursive 
reader,  and  read  —  it  seems  to  me  —  mostly  to  store  his 
mind  with  travel,  history,  literature.  His  genius  is 
singularly  original,  a  brooding  mind  such  as  would  natu 
rally  spring  from  his  sea-ancestry;  heredity  underlay  his 
imagination;  but  the  intellectual  store  that  supported  it, 
all  that  one  draws  from  books,  was  given  by  this  library. 
Yet  were  it  only  solace  that  he  derived  from  his  reading 
here,  it  was  a  great  honor  to  this  library  to  have  afforded 
it  to  so  solitary  and  unbefriended  a  genius  through  the 
years  of  his  trial.  The  memory  of  Hawthorne's  presence 
here  is  that  which  will  longest  abide. 

There  is  a  twofold  moral  which  so  naturally  flows  from 
the  history  of  the  Athenaeum  that  —  though  I  had  no 
thought  of  bringing  you  counsel  —  yet  I  will  not  forbear 
to  draw.  After  all,  too,  this  little  group  of  Salem  insti- 


THE   SALEM    ATHENAEUM  359 

tutions  is  not  only  the  crown  of  the  city,  but  honors  the 
whole  county;  here  its  history  is  stored,  its  ideals  illus 
trated  and  its  fame  most  borne  through  the  world.  The 
first  part  of  the  moral  is  that  this  library  is  by  its  own 
traditions  dedicated,  as  it  were,  to  science  and  literature. 
It  was  agreed  when  the  Athenaeum  took  over  the  Phil 
osophical  Library  that  it  would  continue  to  subscribe  to 
the  great  sets  of  publications;  and  this  was  done.  The 
city  has  certainly  owed  something  of  its  scientific  repute 
in  later  days,  to  the  presence  of  these  books  and  to  their 
example.  It  would  seem  the  mere  fulfillment  of  its  ro 
mantic  birth  that  here  in  this  library  there  should  always 
be  a  body  of  sound  science  in  its  highest  forms.  In  a 
similar  way  it  would  seem  natural  that  Hawthorne's 
library  should  always  hold  the  established  literature  of 
the  world.  I  was  struck  in  reading  over  the  titles  of  the 
catalogue  of  1858  with  the  excellence  of  the  collection. 
I  trust  that  in  the  last  half  century  the  same  standard 
has  been  maintained.  It  might  be  thought  that  the  duty 
I  indicate  should  be  devolved  on  the  Public  Library, 
since  that,  too,  has  been  happily  established  in  the  city; 
but  a  Public  Library  is  necessarily  bound  to  a  popular 
expenditure  of  its  money.  This  little  group  of  institu 
tions,  to  which  I  have  so  often  referred,  offers  an  un 
usual  opportunity;  it  naturally  suggests  co-operation 
and  the  further  development  of  that  associated  effort 
which  Franklin  wisely  advised.  In  many  Italian  cities, 
no  larger  if  so  large  as  Salem,  there  have  long  been 
academies,  which  have  bred  scholars  of  distinction  and 
have  advanced  knowledge  of  all  kinds;  if  the  Athenaeum 
were  developed  along  the  lines  of  its  original  design, 
it  might  well  be  a  powerful  support  of  such  associations. 
The  idea,  however,  may  even  take  a  larger  scope.  You 


360  THE   SALEM   ATHENAEUM 

have,  doubtless,  observed  that  of  late  the  university 
in  this  country  tends  to  become,  what  it  was  of  old  in 
Italy  and  Europe  generally,  a  municipal  institution. 
New  York,  Chicago,  Cincinnati,  Louisville,  Cleveland, 
to  name  no  others,  have  universities  which  are,  ex 
plicitly  or  practically,  city  institutions.  Buffalo  is  now 
considering  the  establishment  of  such  a  university.  Our 
neighborhood  to  Harvard,  and  other  similar  institutions, 
precludes  the  necessity  for  such  action  here;  but  it  is 
plain  that  the  group  of  institutions  here  might  stand  in 
the  place  of  much  of  the  office  of  a  university  for  the 
city,  with  growth  of  time  and  an  intelligent  co-operation 
among  them.  Public  bequests  are  useful;  but  often 
those  who  devise  means  of  extending  their  usefulness, 
of  bringing  what  I  have  called  the  public  wealth,  meant, 
however  limited,  for  communal  purposes,  into  contact 
with  the  people  —  those  who  devise  means  of  extract 
ing  the  greatest  possible  utility  out  of  such  donations, 
are  hardly  less  to  be  thanked  than  the  original  donors, 
as  they  are  hardly  less  serviceable.  The  diffusion  of 
these  riches  is  as  important  as  their  accumulation.  I  be 
gan  by  saying  that  the  scientific  and  literary  institutions  of 
the  city  were  to  it  in  the  place  of  a  university,  and  so  in 
their  measure  they  have  proved;  but  having  regard  to 
the  future  and  keeping  in  mind  the  example  here  early 
set  of  preparing  the  way  on  a  high  scale  of  hope  and 
purpose,  it  is  becoming  to  the  place  and  the  occasion 
tonight  to  hope  that  science  and  literature  may  here  for 
ever  find  a  peculiar  home  and  be  generously  stored  for 
the  higher  uses  of  the  city's  intellectual  life  as  that  is 
fed  from  many  kindred  streams. 

I  was  glad  to  observe  in  the  collection  a  considerable 
proportion  of  foreign  books,  whose  presence,  I  suppose, 


THE   SALEM   ATHENAEUM  361 

was  partly  due  to  the  bequest  of  Miss  Susan  Burley 
specially  set  apart  for  literature  in  foreign  languages. 
It  was  an  enlightened  policy  that  was  thus  followed. 
It  is  singularly  provincial  to  look  on  literature  as  limited 
to  English,  and  much  more  so  if  the  whole  field  of 
knowledge  be  included.  It  is  as  if  one  should  be  content 
to  know  English  history  only  and  nothing  of  the  conti 
nent;  for  English  literature  itself  is  as  much  intertwined 
with  other  literatures  as  English  history  is  with  the 
history  of  the  world.  The  times  of  narrow  horizons  have 
gone  by;  they  are  out-of-date  as  much  as  the  stage 
coach;  the  whole  world  has  been  widely  thrown  open  in 
the  last  age,  and  is  now  accessible  from  end  to  end,  and 
is  greatly  growing  into  one  broad  dominion  of  man's 
mind  and  heart.  It  is  necessary  to  have  on  our  shelves 
the  knowledge  and  life  of  nations  and  races  that  every 
day  grow  more  nigh  to  us  than  the  sister  states  were 
when  this  library  was  founded.  I  was  interested  to  learn 
in  Buffalo  last  spring  that  the  Public  Library  there 
circulates  hundreds  of  Polish  books.  Even  our  little 
library  in  Beverly  has  French  and  Italian  volumes.  In 
such  a  library  as  this,  one  might  well  hope  to  find,  in 
time,  the  entire  standard  literature  of  the  European 
world.  It  is  not  so  very  large  a  body,  numbered  in 
volumes.  It  is  obvious  that  this  collection,  that  I  indi 
cate  as  the  core  of  an  endowed  and  privileged  library 
like  this  —  a  collection  of  the  best  of  the  world's  science 
and  literature  —  would  be  mainly  for  a  select  class  of 
minds;  and  this  might  be  thought  an  objection.  The 
objection,  however,  merely  serves  to  bring  out  more 
forcibly  the  second  part  of  the  moral  which  I  said  natu 
rally  flows  from  the  history  of  the  Athenaeum.  It  has 
in  the  past  fed  two  such  minds,  Bowditch  and  Haw- 


362  THE    SALEM    ATHENAEUM 

thorne;  and  this  was  perhaps,  in  the  balances  of  the 
world,  its  most  important  service.  It  is  said  sometimes 
that  the  best  school  is  that  which  best  educates  the  best- 
endowed  boy  in  it.  My  own  deep  belief  in  individuality 
and  the  immeasurable  value  of  personal  genius  to  the 
world  might  not  lead  me  to  adopt  so  extreme  a  view  in 
practice;  but  I  am  quite  sure  that  such  a  library  as 
this,  with  its  happy  experience,  may  well  see  to  it  that 
its  collection  shall  feed  the  highest  class  of  minds  that 
approach  it  in  youth  or  ripen  in  it  in  manhood,  and  may 
even  consider  this  as  almost  its  hereditary  privilege.  It 
is  equally  necessary  in  the  ideal  city  to  provide  for  the 
best  and  for  the  humblest.  It  belongs  to  the  Public 
Library  primarily  to  provide  for  the  latter,  and  for  such 
a  library  as  this  to  provide  for  the  former.  I  have 
observed  abroad  that  it  is  easy  in  cloistered  institutions 
to  be  content  with  the  riches  of  the  past,  and  to  regard 
them  as  dusty  heirlooms,  with  proud  indolence.  It  is 
rather  for  us  to  lead  the  lives  our  fathers  led. 

Having  ventured  so  far  in  sketching  the  lines  of  a 
noble  city  watching  over  the  life  of  her  citizens,  I  am 
emboldened  to  add  a  few  words  more  upon  a  related 
matter,  which  like  many  things  dear  to  my  heart,  I  can 
serve  only  by  occasionally  speaking  of  as  I  may  have 
opportunity.  I  am  particularly  led  to  it  by  another 
trivial  childish  memory,  associated  in  my  mind  with  the 
Athenaeum.  You  may  remember  there  used  to  stand 
in  the  yard,  not  far  from  the  old  Athenaeum  building, 
some  images.  Now  the  sight  of  those  images  was  my 
first  vision  of  the  world  of  art.  I  used  to  walk  over  from 
Beverly  in  my  boyhood  to  look  at  them,  gazing  (as  it 
seems  to  me  now)  through  a  fence  that  I  was  not  tall 
enough  to  look  over.  It  is,  as  I  say,  a  trivial  memory; 


THE   SALEM   ATHENAEUM  363 

but  it  helped  me  afterwards  to  understand  why  Mr. 
Henry  James,  describing  Hawthorne  looking  over  with 
some  friends  the  designs  of  Flaxman  here  in  Salem, 
spoke  of  the  incident  as  "pathetic."  The  thirst  of  a 
child  for  beauty  is  always  pathetic.  I  remember  an 
acquaintance  telling  me  once,  many  years  ago,  of  a 
London  child  in  the  street  saying  to  him,  as  the  boy 
looked  wonderingly  at  the  roses  he  carried,  "How  rich 
you  are!"  I  have  wondered  often  on  what  crumbs  and 
herbs  of  the  fields  Italian  children  and  Bedouin  boys 
can  physically  survive;  but  it  is  almost  as  surprising  to 
think  on  what  thin  fare  a  New  England  boy,  with  a 
touch  of  imagination,  hung  to  the  life  of  art  in  those 
old  days.  I  was  the  more  struck,  on  this  account,  when 
a  few  years  ago  I  visited  the  Exeter  Academy,  and  was 
amazed  at  the  beauty  of  its  halls  and  rooms;  it  seemed 
an  intellectual  home  —  a  home  for  the  mind  —  filled  as 
it  was  with  casts,  great  views  and  various  ornaments. 
It  opened  the  world  of  the  present  and  past  to  the  eye; 
the  Greek  room  was  a  bodily  entrance  to  a  new  world; 
and  I  am  quite  sure  that  many  a  well-bred  boy,  when  he 
first  passes  those  doors,  feels  that  he  has  come  to  a  new 
and  greater  life,  to  a  place  where  the  life  of  the  human 
mind  is  visible  in  its  noble  history.  I  remembered  the 
grimness  of  my  own  Exeter  days.  Last  year  in  Brusa, 
in  Asia  Minor,  I  visited,  one  rainy  day,  a  mosque,  where 
for  many  years  there  had  been  an  old-established  school, 
and  was  allowed,  when  I  explained  that  I,  too,  was  a 
teacher,  to  go  to  the  boys'  rooms.  I  climbed  great  flights 
of  stone  steps  without  any  guard-rails,  through  what 
seemed  desolate  and  neglected  surroundings,  to  the  roof, 
where  the  two  boys,  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  old,  who  were 
my  temporary  hosts,  showed  me  the  line  of  little  rooms 


364  THE   SALEM   ATHENAEUM 

running  in  an  outside  circle  round  the  mosque,  the  inte 
rior  of  which  could  be  seen  through  apertures  on  the 
other  side.  They  took  me  to  their  room;  a  small,  cell- 
like  place,  with  the  straw  mat  on  which,  as  an  infidel, 
I  could  not  step,  a  low  table  hardly  raised  from  the  floor, 
with  an  inkstand,  a  few  worn  books,  and  materials  for 
making  coffee,  a  pallet  on  the  floor  —  that  was  all,  except 
the  little  window  framing  in  the  most  beautiful  of  May 
landscapes  and  looking  miles  away  over  the  fair  country 
—  such  a  landscape  view  as  we  associate  with  Italian 
monasteries.  It  was  not  so  unlike  my  own  Exeter  days, 
except  that  we  had  no  landscape.  There  was  great 
charm  in  it,  with  the  boys  interested  in  my  interest, 
standing  by;  but  it  was  a  charm  of  old  days,  of  foreign 
things,  of  life  long  past  lived  in  strange  ways  in  the 
mosque.  I  have  made  a  long  anecdote  of  it,  but  my 
mind  lingers  happily  on  the  scene.  Now,  if  you  will 
pardon  me,  it  seems  to  me  that,  rich  as  the  city  is  in 
the  means  of  the  intellectual  life,  if  it  be  lacking  in 
anything,  it  is  in  the  opportunity  to  satisfy  the  thirst 
for  beauty  and  to  open  the  mind  out  in  art.  I  dare  say 
your  school-houses  are  supplied  with  objects  such  as 
make  Exeter  beautiful  for  a  boy  to  grow  up  in,  but  I 
cannot  think  they  are  so  rich  in  such  things  as  I  could 
wish.  There  should  be  casts  of  sculpture  and  bronze 
which  give  to  physical  beauty  its  soul,  which  add  to 
bodily  perfection  radiance  and  wings  as  it  were,  and  teach 
the  boy's  eye  that  perfection  is  not  of  the  body  after 
all,  but  of  what  lives  in  it  and  looks  from  it,  and  is  both 
incarnated  and  released  by  it  in  its  beauty.  There 
should  be  views  of  the  great  cities  and  squares  of  the 
world,  like  the  colored  prints  of  Venice,  which  shall  open 
the  greatness  and  romance  of  the  world  to  the  boy,  and 


THE   SALEM   ATHENAEUM  365 

there  should  be  portraits  of  heroic  figures  and  pictures 
of  historic  action;  and  these  should  be,  not  like  oasis  spots 
flung  on  a  desert  of  wall,  as  I  have  sometimes  seen  them, 
but  abundant,  and  arranged  with  home-like  refinement, 
so  that  these  rooms  and  building  shall  be,  as  I  have  said, 
homes  for  the  minds  of  the  children  and  youth,  and 
homes  that  prepare  them  for  the  greatness  of  the  world 
and  of  man's  life.  In  the  old  days  of  the  India  trade, 
what  romance  there  was  in  these  communities;  every 
home  knew  the  sound  of  magical  Eastern  names;  no 
closet  or  chest  could  open  but  what  Sabaean  odors  came 
forth  on  the  air;  there  were  ivories,  sandal-wood  and 
curious  and  delicate  carvings;  a  thousand  things,  to  stir 
the  imagination,  to  give  the  sense  of  the  distant,  the 
strange,  the  adventurous  —  the  feeling  of  a  world  of 
men.  This  effect  can  still  be  gained  by  the  use  of  such 
means  as  I  have  described.  The  value  of  it  is  worth 
at  least  an  added  year  to  the  curriculum;  and  more  than 
that,  for  it  feeds  what  nothing  else  can  feed  —  what 
starves.  For  having  been  much  in  colleges  and  near  to 
education  I  must  bear  my  hard  testimony  —  the  brain 
thrives  and  the  head;  but  the  soul  dies.  My  creed  is  a 
brief  one;  but  I  do  completely  believe  in  Plato's  doctrine 
that  the  sight  and  presence  of  beauty  shapes  the  soul 
in  childhood  and  youth,  in  beautiful  forms.  If  there 
cannot  be  a  great  museum  of  art  here,  it  is  easy,  and  to 
my  mind  it  is  practically  a  better  thing,  to  adorn  the 
schools  freely  with  the  admirable  reproductions  of  art 
which  are  to  be  had;  and  I  believe  that  such  a  policy 
commonly  adopted  through  the  county  would  be  a  civi 
lizing  power  among  the  very  first  for  efficiency  in  the 
life  of  our  youth.  . 

It  is  obvious  that  in  the  wandering  and  natural  re- 


366  THE   SALEM   ATHENAEUM 

flections  which  this  occasion  has  brought  to  my  mind  — 
and  which  are  meant  less  as  a  formal  address  than  as 
a  neighborly  talk  —  what  has  emerged  more  and  more 
is  the  ideal  of  the  noble  city,  which  has  gradually  clari 
fied  itself  in  my  phrases  as  I  have  spoken.  Yet  it  does 
not  seem  to  me  that  anything  in  that  ideal  is  the  con 
scious  work  of  my  own  thought  or  will;  its  features  have 
come  forth  as  the  statue  from  the  native  rock;  it  is  an 
ancestral  face,  the  hope  of  the  fathers,  the  issue  and  the 
heir  of  their  toils.  Looking  back,  we  have  seen  in  the 
history  of  this  institution  their  humble  but  wise  begin 
nings  for  a  larger  and  communal  intellectual  life;  the 
sea-fortune  wisely  availed  of  to  lift  the  ideal  of  what 
was  possible  in  a  pioneer  land;  the  molding  of  the  genius 
of  the  sons  of  the  city;  and  generation  after  generation 
caring  for  and  enriching  the  trust  left  to  their  charge. 
One  should  specially  mention  Caroline  Plummer  in  hon 
orable  remembrance  tonight,  who  gave  a  home  to  this 
library,  and  housed  with  it  the  kindred  societies  under 
one  roof.  Now  a  new  change  has  come,  and  the  Athe 
naeum  formally  opens  its  own  peculiar  home.  It  is  a 
time  for  congratulation;  but  I  should  not  be  a  New 
Englander,  if  I  did  not  add  that  it  is  also  a  time  to 
remember  that  the  penalty  of  success  is  more  work,  the 
penalty  of  privilege  is  duty,  the  penalty  of  power  is 
responsibility.  These  three  —  work,  duty,  responsi 
bility —  are  tonight  yours  in  large  measure.  It  may 
seem  that  the  lines  in  which  I  have  broadly  forecast  the 
future  are  a  dream.  It  is  a  dream  that  the  touch  of  gold 
would  quickly  make  real;  and  far  less  a  dream  than  the 
reality  would  seem  tonight,  could  those  old  scholars  look 
upon  this  scene  and  the  city  in  which  it  is  set.  The 
history  of  Salem  wealth  gives  every  warrant  that  we 


THE   SALEM   ATHENAEUM  367 

<* 

should  believe  that  the  springs  of  public  spirit  will  not 
dry  up  in  the  life  and  work  of  this  and  later  generations, 
that  the  civic  ideal  will  yet  find  its  wisely  self-denying 
servants  whose  perennial  gifts  have  in  this  city  assuaged 
the  eternal  inward  strife  of  society  and  brought  nearer 
that  social  justice  I  began  by  speaking  of,  which  shall 
secure  to  all  her  citizens  an  equal  ownership  in  the  accu 
mulated  civilizing  power  of  the  state,  which  seems  to  me 
in  the  present  stage  of  our  world  the  rational  end  of 
democracy,  as  a  political  idea.  It  is  in  this  spirit  that 
in  our  hearts,  if  not  in  formal  words,  we  dedicate  this 
house  to  be  a  home  of  the  intellectual  life,  and  a  hearth 
of  the  fine  traditions  of  Salem;  and  we  see,  if  dimly,  yet 
clearer  than  our  fathers  saw,  the  face  of  the  noble  city 
that  in  time  shall  be  —  the  Puritan  city  accomplished 
in  its  own  ideal. 


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